Where Her Spirit Dwells
by withgirl
Summary: Emma feels like she's the only person who cares about the death of the town's mayor which is made worse when the spirit of the woman she misses so much begins to follow her everywhere. Meanwhile, Henry tries to deal with the fact that everyone expects him to mourn a woman who he no longer considers to be his mother[Regina X Emma pairing] T.W's inside.
1. Chapter 1

**T/W for literally everything lol**

 **But to be specific, there will be gun-shot and character death in later chapters so please be aware of this before you start reading this...however, I can promise a happy ending for people who need a light at the end of the tunnel lol Please do let me know if you are interested in more since I'm really motivated to write this one for some reason haha**

Chapter one

Emma slowly brought a spoonful of soaking cornflakes up to her mouth, but she couldn't stop herself from yawing before the food actually made it into her mouth.

It hadn't exactly been difficult lately, so most would probably wonder exactly why exactly she was so tired, but there was one thing that hadn't been perfect since the curse had broken.

Regina.

Since the curse had ended, everyone had been acting as if she didn't exist, including Henry. To the ten-year-old it appeared as though the former Evil Queen was nothing more than the mayor; which was a sentiment that the whole town seemed to agree upon.

As much as everyone had been baying for Regina's blood that day, they had apparently realised that she was the only qualified person capable (and willing) to take on the role of mayor. So, after a few months had passed, there seemed to be some kind of mutual agreement that she could continue to keep her home and job so long as she didn't bother any of the townspeople. Emma had found it very odd that she stubborn woman had gone along with it, but then she had noticed her looking at Henry in the diner and something had occurred to her. Henry always looked so happy when he's with his supposed 'real' family and Emma would understand why Regina would withdraw from him rather than fighting for his attention. It was almost as if she felt as though she had official lost and any further persistence would make Henry unhappy.

At first, Emma hadn't really been bothered by this fact, since she hadn't really been thinking about Regina after the curse had broken. Her entire focus had been on the fact that fairy-tales were real and that she now had parents and was now a full-time parent herself. Focusing on other people hadn't really been at the top of her priority list.

But then, one random day, it had occurred to the saviour that there was someone missing from her life and in that moment, she had felt like a complete moron for forgetting that Regina Mills even existed. And since that moment epiphany, she had not been able to stop herself from noticing the woman around town.

Emma couldn't stop herself from staring when she was absolutely sure that the mayor wouldn't notice, and the more she did it, the more it bothered her.

Regina always looked so sad and lonely and Emma would always feel an intense guilt at the fact that she had taken three months to realise how isolated she had been. Now it had been another three months and the Saviour had yet to actually find the courage to go and talk to Regina.

For one, it had been far too long to be considered casual, and for two, it wasn't exactly as if they had been friends before the curse had broken. In fact, they had spent their days trying to destroy each other to the point where Regina had actually tried to poison her. Somehow, though, Emma was having a hard time reconciling that same woman with the one she had been seeing around town and she certainly had a hard time actually thinking of the brunette as the Evil Queen.

It had been so long since she had spoken to the woman, that when she received a message about attending a one-on-one meeting with the mayor regarding crime statistics, she had been sure she had forgotten how to breathe.

All of their correspondence since the end of the curs had taken place via the mayor's secretary and Regina had obviously been trying to put of this moment for as long as possible. Which was probably why Emma had only received notice about this meeting yesterday.

She had considered just sending her father to their meeting but the thought just made her cringe. It was no secret that the Charmings were not her biggest fans and Emma didn't want to put either of them into that horribly awkward situation. It was for this reason that she had spent a great deal of the night trying to fall asleep whilst also failing horribly to stop her endless thoughts.

Was she supposed to just act professionally during the meeting? If she did that then it wouldn't exactly last long, which somehow worried Emma more. She felt as though the first conversation with the woman who had raised her son for ten years should be longer than ten minutes.

"Mom?" a voice asked from behind her.

Emma jumped and then flinched when she realised that the milk and cornflakes that had been sitting on her spoon had splashed down she top. She frowned down at the stain running down the black material and sighed. She had strategically chosen to go with this specific top since she knew it looked good with her red leather jacket. Not that she was ready to admit aloud, but she had spent a great deal of time trying to decide what to wear. Almost subconsciously (or so she would claim) she had tried for hours this morning to pick something that she thought/hoped Regina would like.

"What are you doing?" Henry asked with a raised eyebrow and a slight chuckle.

Emma blew out a breath and dropped the now empty spoon onto the counter. She knew she could have told him the truth but it hardly seemed right to tell her son that she was nervous about a simple crime report meeting, especially since she wasn't exactly sure why she was so nervous.

"Just tired," she lied, not turning around to look at the boy.

Henry crossed his arms over his chest and tilted his head the woman's back. He could tell that it was more than exhaustion that was bothering her. However, he didn't feel as though he should be prying. Since the previous night, he'd had a strange feeling that something bad was about to happen but he had no rational reason for believing so. Of course, seeing his mother staring blankly at the wall wasn't exactly helping with his anxiety. There was also the fact that he had no possible idea what could be going wrong, which only seemed to make his worrying worse.

Emma, however, was completely oblivious to this fact as she tried in vain to clean her shirt.

She was already cutting it pretty thin with her punctuality since she had been afraid of being too early and now she was legitimately worried that she was going to be late.

"Are you ready for school?" Snow called as she walked out of the bathroom.

Henry looked over to the cheerful brunette who was clearly unaware of the strange atmosphere in the kitchen area. But then again, the perpetually happy woman seemed incapable of allowing anything to penetrate the happy little 'family bubble' they had created.

Emma also, finally, looked over her shoulder as if she was shocked that she wasn't actually alone,

She looked between her mother and her son for a moment before they both frowned in confusion.

"Are you okay, sweetheart?" Mary Margaret asked with her brows pinched together in concern and a hint of confusion. She had been completely unaware that there was anything out of the ordinary going on and seemed completely flabbergasted by the expressions that her daughter and grandson were wearing in that moment.

Emma shrugged ad looked down at her top again, "I'm just tired and now I have to go and get changed for my meeting." With that she rose from her seat and walked off with a little wave by way of saying 'goodbye', though she didn't give any eye contact.

Snow and Henry each watched her go and shared a look that said that neither of them thought that was the whole reason for the Saviour acting strangely.

"When's the last time she had a meeting?" Henry asked as he thought back to all the times he had asked the blonde what she had been doing at work. Each time the answer seemed to consist of paperwork, chasing Pongo or trash-bin ball, which she was apparently the reigning champion of (which would always garner an eye roll from David).

His grandmother shrugged and tore her eyes away from the stair case that her daughter had just ascended. "It was bound to happen eventually," she reasoned, more to herself than to Henry.

The younger brunette nodded in agreement before they each reached for their bags for school.

* * *

Regina propped her head up on her fingers and stared at the Dalmatian who was currently tilting his head at her.

Originally, she never would have thought that she would attend the very therapy sessions she had forced her son into but they had honestly become the most interesting part of her week.

Between work and going home to eat, sleep and occasionally watching some inane TV show that she would never admit to having seen, this was pretty much all she had by way of social interaction.

Even if Archie wasn't really her first choice of a person to talk to, he was still a person, in fact, she was fairly certain that he was the only person who was actually willing to talk to her and who actually cared what she had to say.

"Are you sure about this, Regina? It's a big step to take…"

The brunette finally turned her attention to the red-headed man, which caused Pongo to jump up, begging for attention. Archie quickly placed his hand on the dog's head, silently telling him that it would be a bad idea to try and jump on the queen (again). Once the dog seemed to have settled down, he looked at Regina expectantly.

The mayor simply shrugged as if she didn't quite understand the magnitude of what she was suggesting.

"I can't see that it would change things all that much."

Archie frowned, not quite believing that he was speaking with the same person who had cast the curse, it didn't seem as though she was the type to give up. Although, the woman who sat before him was hardly the Evil Queen anymore and the fact that no one in town could see that was part of the problem.

"It would make everything official…" Archie began, but he was cut off by the sound of buzzing.

Regina frowned before she pulled her phone out her blazer.

She wasn't exactly the most popular person in Storybrooke and she wasn't really used to getting phone calls or texts.

When she read the message, though, her heart nearly stopped. Her mind didn't stop to question why Charming would message her before her body was engulfed in smoke.

Archie blinked a few times at the display of magic. Even if he had been raised in the Enchanted Forest, it had been quite some time since had had actually seen something like that in person.

Plus, there was also the fact that Regina had sworn off magic. The woman hadn't even talked about being tempted in about three months, so he could only assume that something terrible had happened that only the former Evil Queen could deal with.

* * *

Emma's boots beat heavily down upon the stairs. She had taken quite a lot longer to choose a new shirt than she had intended since she had decided the red jacket didn't look quite as good with the new top she had picked.

However, it occurred to her when she was weighing up jacket colours that she was most likely already late for her meeting, which probably also meant that Regina was already going to be pretty pissed off with her.

With a deep breath to steel her nerves, she picked up her phone from where she had left it on the counter. However, instead of something along the lines of 'where the hell are you, Miss Swan?' She had about 15 missed calls and 10 texts from her father.

With a furrowed brow, she quickly scrolled through all the messages until she got to the source of the issue. When she finally did, her mouth dropped open and the device fell back down to the counter.

Not even caring that her phone could possibly have smashed, she grabbed her keys and ran towards the door.

In what felt like an eternity, but what was in reality six minutes, the sheriff arrived at Henry's school and turned off the siren. For a second, she allowed herself to take in the scene before her.

There was a crowed of teachers and students outside of the gates, but she couldn't help but notice one teacher and class were missing from the crowd of panic. The blonde swallowed hard, took a second to make sure that she hadn't forgotten her gun in her quest for the perfect outfit, and then opened her car door.

The sheriff walked straight over to the deputy, who looked utterly helpless and lost.

"What happened?" Emma called to him once she was in earshot.

Charming looked up from his phone and a relieved smile overcame his face, before it quickly disappeared and his expression became a mixture of serious and sombre.

"Jefferson showed up in assembly this morning, pulled a gun out and let every class except Henry's leave…" he explained, almost in one breath.

Emma looked around the crowd again and this time her eyes quickly fell onto Grace. The girl was crying into a friend's shoulder but Emma could it was mostly out of shock. After all, she had probably thought about Jefferson about as often as Henry had thought about Regina since the curse had broken.

The blonde quickly shook her head and looked back over to her father.

"Did he have any demands?" she asked, her mind going over what she was supposed to do. She hadn't exactly had any formal meeting in hostage situations, but she had seen plenty of movies and TV shows and her words seemed to reassure David that she knew what she was talking about.

The deputy nodded and said, "he sent out a teacher with this note."

Emma took the piece of paper from him with a frown. At now she knew that this was premeditated and not a spur of the moment thing, that meant that she could send the bastard for jail for a hell of a lot longer than she had initially thought.

 _Send me the queen and I will let them leave._

The blonde's eyes ran across those words a few times as she considered how many queens were actually in Storybrooke, but it didn't take more than a few seconds for her to realise exactly who he was talking about. Henry had shown her what Regina had done to Jefferson and her eyes fell back over to Paige. He had spent just under thirty years seeing his daughter with another family and being one of the only people in town who knew exactly what was going on in this town. The isolation was enough to make the Mad Hatter actually live up to his name.

"Why wouldn't he just go to Town Hall?" she pondered aloud, though she had a feeling that she already knew the answer to that question.

David merely shook his head, not wanting to give any kind of answer, since he didn't want it actually to be true. It was for this reason that he instead said, "I texted Regina, but there's no sign of her yet."

Emma's eyes widened and she looked up from the note and to her father, "you texted Regina?" she repeated slowly.

"Yes…" he replied, just as slowly clearly not understanding her reaction. "But like I said, there's no sign of her, she's probably not coming."

The saviour shook her head and her hand went to her waist to grip her gun. Her mind went back to the day that Henry had been in hospital and she knew exactly what had happened. There was no chance that Regina would have ignored that text, which left only one other option.

"It's not that she isn't coming, she's already here," she replied, her feet already carrying her towards the entrance before David could try and stop her. The man watched her go for a moment, but quickly blinked out of his surprise and ran to catch up with her.

"Emma," he called out as she ran towards the entrance of the school, he managed to grab her by the arm and pull her back, "you can't go in there."

Emma pulled her arm back and shook her head, "you don't get it, Regina wouldn't have wasted any time. She has already poofed herself into the school so that she can protect Henry!"

David just shook his head, he was about to reply that there was no way that was something that the Evil Queen would ever do, but the blonde had already shrugged his arm off. She saw that he was about to say something to stop her, so she just allowed all of her instincts to take over. Magic ran through her veins and a white smoke engulfed her body. David blinked a couple of times at the empty space before him, before he shook his head and started running towards the school.

Meanwhile, Emma appeared just outside of the assembly hall. Just as she had expected, Regina was standing in front of Jefferson, who was holding a gun up to her as the rest of the class cowered.

Henry was behind Mary Margaret, who had her arm tightly around him so that she could act as a shield if anything happened.

Emma let out a little breath of relief when she saw that nothing had happened yet.

"You took my daughter away from me, why shouldn't I do the same to your son?" The Mad Hatter asked in a broken tone.

Regina looked over her shoulder at Henry and swallowed hard. Emma could tell that whatever she was about to say would be the hardest thing in the world; however, she was fairly certain that Henry couldn't actually see the expression on her face.

"Henry is not my son," Regina said, "he is the son of the woman who broke the curse and gave you the opportunity to reunite with your daughter. It wouldn't be right to punish the saviour and her son for my indiscretions, now would it?"

The blonde woman's mouth fell open at the words and she momentarily forgot that she should be aiming her gun at Jefferson as she looked over to Henry. The boy just had a blank expression playing across his face and Emma couldn't help but think that this moment would not help to reunite the pair when they eventually started talking about.

As Emma checked to see how hurt her son was, Jefferson was thinking over Regina's words. It was true that everyone knew that Henry hadn't spent much time with Regina since the curse had broken, but he wouldn't have imagined that the woman would have given up, but by the look on her face, he had to admit that she certainly had.

"You're right," he announced.

The sound of the bullet leaving the chamber tore Emma's attention away from Henry and it almost felt like everything had gone into slow motion as the bullet travelled across the room and embedded itself into Regina's chest.

A split second later, Emma's hands reacted by themselves as she pulled her gun out of its holster and fired off two shots in quick succession. They both hit Jefferson in his shoulder and his gun fell to the ground.

This seemed to cause the children to run as quickly as they could out of the assembly hall, with the exception of one child.

Emma couldn't bring herself to look over to Regina or Henry as she ran over to Jefferson to knock the gun out of his reach as he fell to the ground clutching his shoulder with gritted teeth.

"Emma!" Someone called from behind her as she stared at Jefferson in contempt.

She heard the sound of distinctly male footsteps behind her and she turned around to see her father walking forward with his gun pointed at Jefferson and she finally allowed to look at the scene that she had been adamantly refusing to believe could be real.

She realised that it had been her mother who had shouted her name. The schoolteacher's hands were already covered in blood as she pressed down on Regina's chest. The mayor was already unconscious as blood flowed from her wound at an astounding rate, Emma's throat constricted as she considered whether Jefferson could have hit a major artery.

Before she made to run over to the woman, her eyes flicked over to Henry. He was the only one from the class left in the room and he simply stood as he watched his grandmother trying to quell Regina's bleeding. He knew that he had said many times that he wasn't her son, but hearing the words coming out of her mouth was a completely different matter entirely.

"You have the right to remain silent…" David began to say as he daughter walked over to his mortal enemy and fell to her knees next to her.

The moment that Emma's hand touched Regina, white smoke engulfed both of them and transported the pair to the hospital.

 **More?**


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter two

Two days, it had been two days since 'the school incident'.

Jefferson was still in the hospital, he had one more day of observation before he would be released into the custody of the Sheriff's Department for prosecution. Emma had thought many times about how she was under no obligation to follow US law. There was no reason why she had to allow Jefferson to continue to live in a six by six cell, she had seen many ways that magic could hurt another person and she had legitimately imagined unleashing some of her magic upon the man who would dare to shoot a mother in front of her son.

However, she knew that it was only her daydreaming. There was no way that she would ever be able to actually bring herself to cause any harm to another person, no matter how much she wanted to. It was one of the more frustrating parts of holding the 'saviour' moniker.

The blonde swallowed hard when she wondered whether anyone would notice if she simply went to the Hatter's room and tore out his heart. She didn't necessarily need to crush it, but having it would mean that she would never need to worry about him hurting someone she cared about again.

Emma quickly blinked out of her thoughts, however, when she felt a sense of guilt overtake her and she looked up from her lap.

She was in the same plastic chair that she had been sat upon since Regina had come out of surgery and she stared at the unconscious woman.

Whale had informed her that they had done all they could and now it was just a matter of waiting to see what would happen. Regina had lost a great deal of blood from the gunshot wound, but the bullet had fortunately just about missed her aorta. There were any number of complications that could occur, apparently the intricate work they had done on her heart left it more than vulnerable and on top of that, he wasn't even sure if she would even wake up. She had lost enough blood to potentially cause brain damage, which would mean that even if her heart miraculously healed, then she might never wake up or she might wake up and not quite be Regina Mills anymore.

The school had yet to actually open again following the 'incident' which is why it annoyed Emma even more that she had been Regina's only visitor.

Her mother had technically visited earlier, but that had only been to ensure that her daughter wasn't starving to death on a waiting chair.

The woman had looked at Regina with a regretful look on her face, but once she was satisfied that Emma had eaten the bearclaw she had brought for her, she had said something about having to go back to Henry.

As far as Emma could tell, her son had been acting normal based upon how he had sounded when she had spoke to him. He had made no attempt to visit his mother using his days off and he hadn't even so much as asked how she was.

Emma had the urge to force the information onto him, but she had decided against this course of action. It was a very complicated situation by all accounts and the last thing that Regina had said certainly wouldn't have helped. The blonde was sure that Henry should have been able to tell that Regina had only said that he wasn't her son so that she could protect him. However, she knew that it was a very traumatic situation and Henry's mind had a tendency to vilify Regina at every possible moment. If those were the last words that he ever heard from Regina, Emma was sure that he may never find it in himself to think of her as anything but the Evil Queen.

"Sheriff Swan," someone said timidly behind her and Emma turned around to look at the nurse. With the exception of using the toilet and getting coffee, Emma hadn't actually left this chair. She was determined that Regina would not be left alone for longer than five minutes. Which meant that when Whale had asked the nurse to get her to leave, she had instantly felt anxious at the thought of asking the very sleep deprived saviour to leave her seat.

"Doctor Whale wants to do some one-to-one observation with Mayor Mills to check her heart function and he asked that no visitors be present during the test," she said.

Emma nodded, "when can I come back?"

"Tomorrow," the nurse replied.

The blonde thought to protest, but it wasn't as though she could spend every night half-dozing on the seat. She would eventually need to go back to the station rather than forwarding emergency cals to her cell phone (not that she had actually received any calls). There was also the Henry-factor, she needed to make sure that he was actually okay as he claimed to be.

"Okay, but please make sure that I'm notified if there are any changes in her condition?" Emma asked rather pleadingly, she knew that she wasn't technically Regina's emergency contact or family member, which meant that she had no right to know to actually know about her condition. However, she felt as though there should be at least one person who actually acted as though they cared about her.

The nurse nodded and the blonde reluctantly stood from her seat. She looked over to Regina's unconscious form and allowed herself a few seconds to take in the sound of the heart monitor and the steady in and out of the ventilator.

All of the wired and may have terrified Emma when she had entered the room, but now they were almost comforting. They meant that Regina was still alive and that she hadn't lost her chance to…well she didn't know what exactly she wanted, but she knew that she wanted Regina to wake up so that she could figure it out.

"Of course," he nurse replied.

Emma looked at Regina for a moment longer, she felt as though there was something she should be doing before leaving. But the prospect of saying 'see you later' in front of the nurse made her feel more than awkward.

It was for this reason that she instead just nodded in the nurse's direction and smiled at Regina before she tiredly dragged herself out of the room.

* * *

Henry stared absently at the worksheets spread out in front of him. He had convinced Mary Margaret that she should give him the homework for the lessons they were missing due to the school's closure. The schoolteacher had been reluctant at first, but she decided that Regina would probably appreciate this more than allowing him to play video games.

As much as Snow had thought that she hated Regina, seeing the resigned look on her face as she lost consciousness from blood loss, had made her see the woman in a different light.

She was sure that the Evil Queen wouldn't have transported herself to the school so that she could stand in front of a gun. In fact, it almost felt like something that the woman who had saved her from an out-of-control horse would have done.

However, these were not thoughts that she felt able to voice just yet, which was why she had granted Henry's request instead of forcing him to talk about his hospitalised mother, even if she did find it strange that he hadn't even asked how she was. He technically didn't even know if she was alive.

The woman continued to watch Henry as he read over his work and she clutched her mug of hot cocoa strongly. She wanted to talk to him, but she had no idea whether it would be a good idea, even if she felt as though the elephant in the room was suffocating her.

However, she was saved from cutting the tension by the sound of the front door opening and closing. Her eyes flew over to the door in surprise since David wasn't supposed to come home until dinner time.

"Emma," she smiled as the blonde walked over to the kitchen counter to sit next to her.

Henry looked over to her, and for a moment, Emma was sure that there was a question on the tip of his tongue, but he didn't actually say anything. He, instead, just studied his mother's face for a moment, as if this would give him all of the answers that he needed before he looked back down to his word without a word.

Emma frowned at him, though she noticed that he didn't appear to actually be focusing on his work. She was sure that he would be listening intently if she started discussing Regina, even if he wasn't willing to admit that he was at least interested in the mayor's condition.

"How is she?" Mary Margaret asked as if on cue. She already knew about Regina's heart and the chance of brain damage, so Emma was quite glad that Henry wouldn't need to hear the specifics. She wasn't sure that she would have allowed him to hear everything, even if he acted remotely interested in the woman who had raised him for ten years.

"The same, she still hasn't woken up," Emma replied and looked over her shoulder at the boy's back. She could tell by the way that his shoulders tensed that he was gripping his pen for all that it was worth. It was so obvious that he wanted to ask more, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. In his mind, Emma Swan was his mother and Regina Mills was just the woman who had to adopt him so that he could bring the saviour to a cursed town. Regina was just the evil mother that he was supposed to have at the beginning of the story, but that didn't explain the relief that he felt when he heard verbal confirmation that she was actually alive, even if she wasn't awake, it felt as though a heavy weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

For the past two days, he had been on pins and needles waiting for someone to say something about the mayor. However, he knew that probably wouldn't happen until Emma came back to the apartment.

The blonde noticed that she had piqued his interest and she smiled slightly. She had been legitimately that he would be too stubborn to admit that he cared about her, but now she was slightly more confident that might stop avoiding the truth soon because it didn't fit into his idea of a 'good story'.

She was about to open her mouth to say something else, but she was cut short by the sound of a sharp knock at the door.

The three Charmings each frowned at the door, they didn't usually get visitors to the loft.

Mary Margaret took the initiative and stood from the stool to walk over to the door and yank it open. The moment the smirking man on the other side appeared. She had the urge to slam the door shut in his face, but managed to resist this urge to do so.

"Mr Gold," the former bandit said tightly, "what can I do for you?"

Emma sighed and stood from the stool so that she could see what was going on, but all she could see was that her mother was very much reluctant to actually let Rumplestiltskin near her daughter and grandson.

"I need to speak with Miss Swan and her son," the man replied, "it is rather important."

Mary Margaret looked over her shoulder and Emma just nodded in permission. She was fairly sure that there was no way that he would be able to make things any worse.

The schoolteacher took a step back to allow the man into the loft.

Emma narrowed her eyes at the stack of papers under his arm and a feeling of foreboding overcame her.

"Mayor Mills asked me to look over these papers before…the incident," Rumple announced as he looked straight over to Henry. He may not care about what happened to Regina, but he certainly cared about his grandson, even if Neal was no longer around, he still wanted to protect Henry, which meant not dropping this bombshell only two days after he had seen the woman shot.

However, by the expression on the boy's face, Mr Gold had the distinct feeling that he wouldn't leave if he asked him to, it was probably something that he should be aware of this anyway, so that he would be able to have his say in the matter.

"Why are you bringing them here?" Emma asked as she eyed them suspiciously.

"Well, Regina would have most likely had this discussion with you herself, but with her…situation, I believe that it would be rather important to deal with the matter before…"

The man trailed off when Emma narrowed her eyes and he shot a look over to Henry. Other than a little clench of his jaw, it didn't appear as though he was affected by their conversation.

Emma swallowed hard. Just like Gold, she knew that Henry most likely would not be leaving the room, but she had a distinctly awful feeling that she knew what Gold was about to give them.

"What is it?" Mary Margaret asked when no one made any attempt to speak.

Rumple blew out a breath and walked over to the blonde woman stood protectively by her son.

He handed the first stack of papers over to the saviour and her brows pinched together as she read the first few lines.

"Adoption Dissolution…" Henry read aloud and Emma looked at him in surprise. In her concentration, she hadn't realised that the boy had stood up to peer at the papers.

Mary Margaret's eyebrows shot up at the words and Emma's mouth fell slightly open. Henry's expression, on the other hand, was just blank.

"The contract stipulates that all parental rights will be transferred to you, Miss Swan," Gold explained and then handed her another contract, "and if you sign this, Henry's surname will legally become Swan."

Emma stared at the forms, which already had Regina's signature at the bottom. Her mind was going in overdrive as she worked through what all this meant.

From a logistical point of view, it made complete sense.

Henry hadn't spent a single moment with his 'legal' mother in six months and if the unthinkable did happen to Regina, signing these forms would probably make things easier for Henry from a legal standpoint. Especially if he ever wanted to do anything outside of Storybrooke. She wasn't exactly sure whether the state recognised 'Henry Daniel Mills' as a registered person, since she was pretty certain that no one else in this town were actually registered as American citizens.

It was one of the the questions that she had thought about asking Regina when she had imagined that they could potentially be friends.

However, the thought that Regina could have ever relinquished her parental rights over Henry just didn't feel like something that the Regina she knew would do. Then again, the former Evil Queen had already proved that she was willing to do anything to ensure the boy's safety, so it stood to reason that she would be willing to give away the last thing she had in order to make him happy.

When no one said anything, Gold announced, "I believe this was the main reason that she arranged a meeting with you so hastily…"

Emma's throat constricted at the thought of how that meeting would have gone, she was almost certain that the resigned expression Regina would have been most likely been wearing could've broken the saviour and then she would've have spent the rest of day stressing about telling Henry.

Despite this fear, when she finally looked down to Henry, he looked only a little fazed. The blonde had been certain that she would've at least seen anger flash in his eyes, especially since the circumstances were now much worse than they had been before. However, she kind of hoped that was why he didn't looked too bothered. Maybe he only needed time to come to terms with what had happened at the school and then he would be able to process everything at once. It would certainly help when Regina woke up, since he would be able to actually talk to her and see that she had lied to Jefferson. Of course, her claim that he wasn't her son wasn't being helped by the contract that stated that he no longer was.

"You just need to sign both contracts and I will ensure that they are notarised," Gold said.

Emma started shaking her head. There was no way that she wanted to sign either of these forms. It wasn't as though she didn't want Henry to be her son legally, but she always thought that it would have ended up more in a situation where both she and Regina were his mothers.

Before she could say that she wouldn't be signing, Henry leaned over to the table and grabbed his pen and handed it to Emma without a word.

The blonde looked at him cautiously and he just nodded at her in encouragement.

Emma opened and closed her mouth a few times before she looked over to Mr Gold and said, "I think that we have some things to talk about as a family."

The store owner just rolled his eyes. He had hoped that he would walk away from the apartment with the papers signed since he had no idea that any of the Charmings actually cared about Regina (though he had his suspicions that Henry would one day realise just how much he actually loved the woman). He certainly wouldn't have imagined that the saviour would have passed this opportunity since it would just make everything easier for everyone involved, unless of course, Emma wanted Regina in her life, even if she hadn't shown any indication before the school incident.

The man just nodded and began walking towards the door, "please bring the contracts to my store when you decide."

With that he let himself out and a silence fell over the apartment.

Emma and Mary Margaret exchanged a cautious look as Henry gathered up his worksheets.

"You should just sign it," he shrugged, though it didn't escape either of their notice that he wasn't looking at them, "I'm going to study upstairs."

* * *

Jefferson slowly opened his eyes and took a moment to scan the room before his eyes fell onto his arms. One was hung in a sling whilst the other was cuffed to the railing of the bed. He experimentally pulled his arm up and his head fell back against the pillow with a heavy sigh when the chain pulled taut.

"You'll pull your stitches if you slam your shoulder like that," someone tutted.

Jefferson opened his eyes again and narrowed his eyes at the doctor who was standing by his IV bag. Whale closed the hatch below it and smirked before he said, "I decided to lower the morphine, you should probably get used the pain before you go to prison."

The Mad Hatter frowned and shifted in his bed. The morphine was certainly still in his system since he couldn't really feel anything, but the thought of the painkillers wearing off was rather terrifying.

Jefferson opened his mouth to say something, but only a small croak came out. The chain on his handcuffs went taut again when he tried to raise his hand to his throat and he closed his eyes in frustration.

Whale walked forward and grabbed the cup of water with a straw sat in it and held it to Jefferson's face. The man in the bed opened his eyes and then narrowed them at the man; however, he found that he couldn't resist and he began to hungrily drinking the ice-cold water hungrily. Finally, he seemed to decide that he could probably talk now and he leaned backed and looked at the man expectantly. He could tell by the expression on his face that there was something he wanted aside from taking his morphine away.

"You wanted to ruin Regina's life but all you have achieved is putting her in a coma and getting the saviour to realise that she has feelings for her. I don't really think that is exactly the revenge you were going for," Whale explained.

Jefferson frowned at the determination on Frankenstein's face. The fact was, there wasn't much planning that went into his 'revenge' plan. He had kind of just snapped during another breakfast alone without his daughter. If he had thought it through, he probably would have realised that Regina had pretty much already lost Henry and that it would have made much more sense to just go straight to Town Hall rather than waving a gun in an assembly that his daughter was attending. In that moment, his still-groggy mind realised that he had most likely already lost Grace and freedom in one fell swoop. It was for this reason that he couldn't help but think that whatever Whale was planning would be better than just going to prison whilst Regina would probably wake up and get her happy ending. Plus, he had the sneaking suspicion that he would be getting the maximum punishment for his crime if the sheriff had anything to do with it.

"And how do you suppose that I get the 'revenge I was hoping for'?" Jefferson asked with his voice still cracking slightly.

Whale reached into his pocket and pulled out a phial of bright green liquid and Jefferson's eyebrows shot up.

"Science has never particularly worked out in my favour so I decided to start looking more into magic after the curse broke. Of course, I can't cast my own spells, but you don't have be a wizard to make a poison that will replicate the effects of a Death Curse," the doctor said as he inspected his own creation. He was rather proud of it considering how long her had spent studying and preparing it so that it would do exactly what he wanted it to do.

After everything had calmed down, he felt as though he was the only one still outraged by what Regina had done to everyone in this town.

She had torn them away from their lives so that they could live in a little, boring (with the exception of the occasional crisis) town and she made them live the same day over and over again for close to three decades. He didn't feel as that she should be allowed to just carry on being mayor of the people she had cursed. At the same time, however, he didn't feel that simply throwing her into prison would suffice and trying to hurt her himself would only result in him losing his freedom as well.

When he heard about the 'school incident' he knew that an opportunity had finally presented itself. It wasn't as though he could just do something during the surgery. The room was full of people who would have known if he hadn't done absolutely everything he could have to save the mayor. He certainly didn't want to deal with a pissed off saviour who would most likely do everything she could to find out if something happened.

This way, he had the perfect man to take the blame. No one would believe the Mad Hatter if he ever did decided to rat him out, it was the perfect plan.

"I'll let you go and you inject Regina with this while I hold a staff meeting. There will be no one in the hallways and Emma has been instructed not to return until I finish some 'one-to-one heart monitoring'" Whale explained and used his index finger to emphasise the last words, "you slip out and return to Wonderland or whatever," he added as he reached down to the personal effects Emma had asked them to take and he tossed the hat onto the bed.

Jefferson eyed the hat distrustfully, "if I inject Regina with a Death Curse, the heart monitors will alert the whole hospital to my presence."

"Equipment fails all the time, I'll just say that the mayor should have allocated more money to our budget," Whale shrugged, "by the time a nurse comes to do the observations, she'll already be gone and it will be too late to start CPR."

The patient frowned, "I still don't understand…how would just killing Regina be good revenge for you?"

"That's the best part," Whale laughed, almost gleefully, "She won't just be dead, this will keep her body just alive enough so that she appears dead but her soul would never be able to move on. Her spirit would be trapped in Storybrooke and she would have to watch those she loves be happy without her."

Jefferson quirked an eyebrow at the doctor, he was seriously beginning to question whether morphine caused hallucinations.

"Spirits?" he asked.

"Believe me or not, but the fact is that I am offering you a chance at freedom. Say no and I will let the sheriff take you tomorrow, say yes and you will be free and be able to live with the knowledge that Regina Mills wills will be miserable for the rest of eternity."

Jefferson just frowned and Whale rolled his eyes.

"The staff meeting is in two hours, the morphine should have completely worn off. I'll get your answer then."

 **A/N I would love to hear what you thought, reviews really do help me with productivity lol**


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter three

 _Emma sat in the diner and raised her mug of hot cocoa to her lips with a deep sigh. All she could think about in that moment was that there was something missing from her life, but she just couldn't put her finger on what that thing could be._

 _She had her parents and her son. For a moment, she considered that it could be Neal who she was missing, but he had chosen to leave. She understood that it was a big deal to find out that he had a son who he had no idea had even existed, but that didn't mean that she wasn't pissed when she had found the note posted through the door of her apartment. He explained that he just wasn't ready for the responsibility and that he didn't feel prepared to live in a town with his father with magic everywhere._

 _The hardest part had been when she had tried to figure out how she was going to tell Henry. The boy had been upset by it at first, but the fact was that he just hadn't known his father long enough to be upset for long. It was more the fact that he had lost the possibility of having a father and after a couple of weeks, he stopped mentioning the man and he even asked Emma to stop trying to find out where he was. If he didn't want to stay with his son, then good riddance._

 _It was this sentiment that Emma found herself believing in whole-heartedly, so she knew that it couldn't be her first love who was bothering her in this moment._

 _She just felt as though there was a huge void in her life and she just couldn't figure out what it could possibly be._

 _"_ _Mom?" Henry asked with a frown and the blonde's attention shot up to the boy who she hadn't realised was there before. "Are you okay?"_

 _Emma frowned and shook her head, but she was interrupted from answering his question when the bell over the door rang out to announce a new arrival._

 _The sheriff's eyes shot over to the door and they widened slightly at the sight of the brunette walking over to the counter. Emma swallowed hard as she tried to figure out exactly who this woman was. She just looked so familiar, but she just couldn't figure out where she had seen her before._

 _"_ _Who are you looking at, mom?" Henry asked with a frown as he tried to get a better look at the woman who was causing his mother to look so devastated._

 _Emma looked back over to Henry for a moment, before she turned back and pointed at the woman, "do you know who that is?"_

 _The boy leaned forward so that he could get a better look, but he just shook his head._

 _"_ _Never seen her before…" the boy said._

 _Emma just shook her head and slid out of her seat so that she could go over to the counter, despite Henry's small protest._

 _She was just close enough to the counter when Ruby said, "your coffee, Mayor Mills."_

 _"_ _Thank you, Miss Lucas," the mayor replied as she placed a couple bills onto the counter._

 _Emma's footsteps faltered and she opened and closed her mouth a few times. She now knew that she woman was the mayor of Storybrooke, so why was she having such a hard time remembering her name?_

 _The blonde was about to open her mouth to talk to the woman, but she was cut short by someone who answered the question that she hadn't said aloud._

 _"_ _Regina!"_

 _Emma's eyes shot to the source of the sound and her eyebrows shot up when she saw the Mad Hatter brandishing a gun in the middle of the diner. However, no one else seemed to notice what was going on as they continued with their breakfasts. The blonde quickly looked back over to Henry to find that he was staring intently at his comic book once again._

 _The saviour swallowed hard and whispered, "Jefferson?"_

 _The man completely ignored her and said, "you took everything away from me you bitch!"_

 _Regina simply stood completely still with her to-go cup of coffee still in her hand. Emma opened her mouth to tell her to move but no sound came out and when she reached to her waist to take out her own gun, she found that there was nothing there._

 _When the gunshot sounded throughout the diner, no one even batted an eyelid._

 _Time seemed to stand still as red began to spread through the fibres of Regina's shirt and her body crumpled to the ground._

 _Finally, Emma felt her muscles reacting to what she wanted them to do and she slid onto her knees next to the woman._

 _She placed her hand under her head to provide some kind of cushion and inspected the gushing blood before she looked back over to see Jefferson simply walking out of the diner with no resistance._

 _The blonde thought about going after him, but she instead just looked back down to Regina and said, "it's going to be okay."_

 _"_ _No it isn't Emma," Regina replied with a shake of her head._

 _The blonde's eyes widened and she just pulled out her phone to dial 911; however, the moment her eyes made contact with the screen, she noticed that the phone was already ringing with 'Dr Whale' as the caller ID._

Emma's eyes flew open and she pushed herself up on her hands.

She took a moment to look around the living room that she had chosen to sleep in so that Henry could have some privacy before she realised that her phone was actually ringing.

With a quick look to make sure that Snow hadn't been woken by the noise, she picked up the device and sighed deeply when she saw that it was 3.32 am.

She pressed accept on the final ring and said in a groggy voice, "hello?"

"Sheriff Swan," Whale sighed, sounding genuinely distraught and Emma clutched the phone tighter as she hoped that the tone of voice didn't mean what she thought that it meant. "As we feared, the sutures we placed near Regina's aorta were not enough to stabilise her heart…"

Emma ran her hand over her face and shook her head, despite the fact that she knew that the doctor couldn't see her, "what are you saying, Whale?" She asked.

The man took a deep breath and said, "at 3.21 a nurse arrived in Regina's room to do her observations and she discovered that the heart monitor had malfunctioned. When her heart stopped, we had no way of knowing so by the time someone arrived at her room…it was far too late to perform CPR. I pronounced time of death at 3.16 am."

The blonde sat in silence for a few moments as her mind tried working through exactly what this meant.

This meant that she was really Henry's one and only mother, this meant that Regina would never have the chance to gain the redemption that she deserved.

However, the biggest revelation that she had was that this meant that she would never get the chance to tell the infuriating woman that she had feelings for her since that day at the mine, she had just been too stubborn to admit that possibility even to herself.

"What am I supposed to do now?" She asked hollowly, though she didn't think that Whale understood just how deep the question went.

* * *

[One week later]

Emma propped her head up on her closed fist and pressed play again.

She wasn't exactly sure what she was looking for anymore since she had seen this video about 100 times, she could basically play the thing in her mind at this point. Despite this, this was the only lead that she had in Regina's case and since there was literally nothing else that she could allow herself to think about (since she would have to think about the fact that the former Evil Queen was actually dead) she decided that this is what she should be focusing on right now.

As she had seen many times before, Jefferson entered the room with a syringe and injected Regina directly into her heart. Emma stared at the heart monitors, wishing that they would start blaring like they were meant to, but she knew that they were 'broken'. Whale had provided all of the paperwork to prove that the hospital equipment hadn't be serviced in decades so it wasn't as if she could look any further into that lead.

However, with the footage, she was able to see for herself the moment that Regina's heart rate had flatlined as Jefferson had activated his hat and took himself to only god-knows-where. The rest of the video was just about an hour of Regina laying bed in her bed (which Emma had started skipping after the first time she had watched the video) until the nurse finally entered at the exact time that Whale had told her she would.

The woman was completely calm for a few moments until her eyes connected with the heart monitor and her eyes widened. She quickly launched forward and checked the pulse for confirmation before her fist smashed against the call button and nurses and Whale ran into the room not five seconds later.

The doctor did a few quick checks before his shook his head and checked his watch so that he could call time of death.

Emma ran her hand over her face before she leaned back in her chair and pushed the pause button. Just like every other time she had watched it, she had found nothing that could prove that anyone but Jefferson had been involved.

She had been sure that there was no way that a man who had just woken up on day and brought a gun to his daughter's school could have pulled off something so calculated. With his arm in a sling, how had he gotten out of his handcuffs and found a syringe of something that would kill Regina? At least if it had been an empty syringe, she wouldn't have been quite as suspicious. But as it was, she couldn't shake the feeling that the man hadn't pulled this off alone. However, when she had asked for the footage from Jefferson's room, it had turned out that the room didn't have any cameras installed.

This was all that Emma had been doing since the funeral and she just felt like there was more that she should be doing.

It had been a very small affair. Regina had been laid to rest next to her father in a clear glass coffin since Rumple had offered ensure that her body would be forever kept in an embalmed like-state.

Emma had found that concerning at the time, but she had quickly realised that the man wasn't quite the Dark One he had been in the Enchanted Forest.

Since Neal had left, he had been doing everything that he could to protect Henry (almost as if he was trying to provide him some fatherly presence by being a good grandfather). He must have understood that Henry would eventually find himself mourning for the mother who he had refused to see in the hospital and being able to visit her in the mausoleum would probably make the process less traumatic for the boy when the floodgates eventually crashed open. There was also the fact that she was sure that the man did actually care about Regina, even if he would probably never say it aloud. He had spent a great deal of time trading the innocent Regina to be the Evil Queen and no matter how darkened his heart had to be by now, Emma hoped that a man who could care about his grandson so fiercely could also care about his former protege whose life he had basically ruined.

As for Henry, he hadn't even attended the funeral and had spent the whole day pretending as if there was nothing different.

Snow and David were not particularly helping, even though they had attended the funeral, neither of them even attempted to talk about Regina afterwards.

The only person who she was absolutely sure cared about what happened to Regina was Archie. It was no secret that Regina had been seeing the former cricket for therapy sessions and the sheriff found herself so grateful for that fact. It meant that the brunette hadn't spent the last six months of her life completely alone, even if her only human interaction was with a shrink and the insufferable meetings that she must have had to endure as mayor.

The best thing of all, he'd actually had some good things to say about the woman as they had laid her to rest, which was a task that Emma had felt wholly unprepared for at the time. Before the funeral, she had desperately tried to think of the many words that she could use to describe Regina, but nothing seemed quite adequate.

Archie had simply describe her as a 'hero'.

The blonde swallowed hard and blinked away some tears when she realised that she had allowed her mind to roam again. She wasn't supposed to be sad right now, she was supposed to be finding out exactly what sequence of events led to Regina's death and how the hell she was going to find Jefferson when he could quite literally be in any realm.

She was about to lean forward to press play again on her computer, but she was cut short by the sound of footsteps approaching her office.

She sighed and turned around to tell her mother that she'd already had lunch, but her mouth clamped shut when she saw the man standing with a messenger bag slung over his shoulder.

"Gold," she sighed and leaned back in her seat.

"Not a very inviting 'hello', Miss Swan," he replied with a smirked as he walked further into her office and took the seat opposite herself without asking for permission.

The blonde rolled her eyes and sighed as she tried to remind herself that this man had done nothing but help since everything had happened. He had even arranged the funeral when Emma had no idea where to start. She didn't feel as though she had the right to make any decisions and her parents had no idea how to help either no matter how supportive they had tried to be. She couldn't get past the feeling that they didn't quite understand just why she was mourning for Regina, which only pissed her off more and made her want to spend more time at the station reviewing the same footage rather than going home to an apartment where no one seemed to want to acknowledge what had happened.

"And what exactly should I be inviting you into my office for?" She asked as politely as possible, though she knew that it came off rather rude. To be fair, she also knew that she had been rather snappy with everyone as of late, so the man should have probably expected it.

Rumple tilted his head, he thought to make some terse reply but he decided against it. It was clear to anyone with eyes that Emma was having the hardest time with the loss of the town's mayor, since she had basically been living in the station. The woman had only emerged when she either needed food or a shower. As he inspected her face in that moment, he could also tell that the woman was only getting just about enough sleep to survive.

"I thought that you would appreciate an update on the town outside these walls…" he said.

Emma narrowed her eyes at the bag still clutched over his shoulder. She could tell that wasn't the only reason that he was here, but she supposed that if he wanted to ease her into whatever his motive was, she should just let him since she should actually be aware of what was going on in the town she was the sheriff of.

"Well…the council has voted and the position of mayor has temporarily been given to Belle until the time comes for an election…"

The sheriff swallowed hard before she blew out a breath. Even if she was aware that Storybrooke needed a mayor and that Belle was probably the best choice as far as quickly learning how to be mayor went, she couldn't help but think that it still wasn't right. Mayor French just didn't have the same ring to it as Mayor Mills did.

"Okay…" she finally said and bit the inside of her cheek when her voice cracked slightly. "What else?"

"None of the tracking spells that I have tried have worked, if Jefferson is in a realm without magic or somewhere where magic works differently then there maybe no way to find him from Storybrooke…"

"Please, just keep trying?"

The pawn store owner nodded and it didn't escape his notice just how desperate the woman sounded in that moment. It was undeniable that Emma wasn't prepared to deal with the fact that Regina was actually dead. She obviously thought that trying to get justice for the woman would be the perfect distraction from having to deal with what had happened. However, Rumple knew from experience that denial was never the way to deal with loss, you just how to find a way to move forward which was precisely why he was here.

He finally pulled out the papers from his bag and placed them on the desk.

Emma eyed them for a moment before she shook her head vehemently, "I didn't sign these last week, what could possibly make you think that I would sign them now?!"

The man held up his hands to placate the woman, in the hopes that she wouldn't get the sudden urge to pull her gun out. He had done nothing but help all week and that had partly been in the hopes that she would actually consider this.

"This may surprise you, Miss Swan, but Henry is a registered person in the USA, as is Regina Mills. I ensured that she would be recognised by the state when I arranged the adoption so that no one would get suspicious if they ever discovered that Henry was adopted by someone who does not exist. Regina's death has been logged on the system so eventually some social worker will realise and rush to Storybrooke to find out if he is in a safe home. I believe that it would be in everyone's best interest if when someone from social services eventually stumbles across Henry's information that they see he is in the care of his birth mother," he explained, "I believe that if anyone from the state came to Storybrooke, there would be quite the investigation opened up, wouldn't you agree?"

Emma blew out a breath as she tried to find a fault in his logic but she had to admit that he had thought of everything. Plus, she was pretty sure that Regina would kill her if Henry was taken into foster care just because she refused to sign a stupid form.

"Fine," she sighed, "but I'm not signing this, his name is Henry Mills." With that, she pushed the 'change of name' form away from the top of the pile as she grabbed a pen to sign the 'adoption dissolution' contract.

Mr Gold opened his mouth to protest but he decided that would be an argument for another day and it would probably be something that Henry would have to fight for if he really wanted his surname to be 'Swan'.

The blonde woman methodically went through all of the pages until she had finally signed next to all of the post-it notes contained within it and she pushed it over to Rumplestiltskin.

"I'll get these notarised," the man sighed as he stood from his seat and slipped the papers back into his bag. He then picked up the 'change of name' form and said, "if you change your mind, I can redraft these at a later date."

Emma just nodded and the man was about to turn away, before she said, "thank you, Gold…for all of your help..."

The Dark One looked over his shoulder and just nodded with a small, but genuine, smile. He wouldn't say it aloud, but he had recently found himself missing the former Evil Queen's presence in Storybrooke.

Emma blew out a breath and allowed her shoulders to slump as she considered how long it was until she would have to tell Henry that he was now legally her son.

She quickly decided that was something that she could deal with later and she was about to lean forward again to press play, but she was interrupted once again.

"I've never known him to be so helpful."

Emma's shot up at the familiar voice and her mouth promptly dropped open at the sight of a brunette woman leaning against the entrance to her office.

"Regina?!"

 **A/N Reviews are very much appreciated, they really help with motivation :D**


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter four

"Regina?!" Emma yelped as she fell back against the back of her chair with enough force to make the structure fall back. Luckily, it just hit the wall and the blonde slammed both of her hands onto their arms so that she could regain her balance.

The brunette woman leaning against the door smirked and unhitched herself from the frame so that she could walk further into the office.

"It's times like this when I find it hard to believe that you were ever supposed to be a princess," Regina said with her arms crossed over her chest.

Emma swallowed hard, with her hands still tightly clutched on the arms of her desk chair. For a moment, she simply allowed herself to look at the woman stood in front of her desk.

If she let herself forget what had happened over the last week and a half, then she could imagine that this was just a meeting between the mayor and the sheriff.

However, memories of the funeral and the video came rushing through her mind and she shook her head vehemently.

"I'm going insane," the saviour muttered as she placed her head in her hands. For about ten seconds, she took deep breaths and looked back up, expecting there to be no one there when she opened her eyes. The sheriff blew out a breath of frustration when she opened her eyes to the mayor looking at her with a quirked eyebrow and her arms still over her chest.

"After everything you have been through, Miss Swan, are you really telling me that you don't believe in ghosts?"

Emma blinked a couple times and took a few seconds to look past Regina so that she could make sure that no one would see her talking to what she could only assume was, in reality, thin air.

"You're a…ghost?" Emma asked cautiously and began considering just how little sleep she had really gotten over the past week.

"Ghost, spirit, apparition. There's many words for it, but they all mean basically the same thing," Regina shrugged.

Emma looked from side to side and tried to decide whether she could run away from this. However, she quickly realised that if this was indeed a hallucination, then this was not something that she could run away from.

"And…you're haunting me?" The blonde squeaked.

Regina just smirked and shook her head. When consciousness had first returned to her, she'd found herself standing in an empty hospital room. Her first instinct had been to look down to make sure that she wasn't wearing one of those hideous hospital gowns. She frowned when she saw that she was wearing a tight blue dress that she hadn't worn in quite a while.

The confused woman had quickly decided to leave the room in search of someone who would be able to tell her what the hell was going on. However, she quickly found that not a single person would look at her, much less talk to her. At first, she had assumed that the town had finally decided to collectively pretend that she no longer existed, but that theory was quickly proven wrong when a nurse ran directly through her.

In that moment, she remembered the gunshot ringing across the room. It dawned on her what that must mean and she felt as though all of the air had been stolen from her lungs. She had taken a few deep breaths before it occurred to her that she didn't exactly require oxygen anymore.

From then she made it her mission to find out the date and time and she soon discovered that it had been a week and two days since she had been shot in the school. She couldn't remember anything after she had fallen unconscious and a quick walk to Granny's just confirmed what she thought had happened.

She couldn't say that two dwarves toasting to her death didn't sting a little, but it wasn't as bad as when she had turned to see Henry sitting with his grandparents as he read a comic book. It appeared as though everyone was either overjoyed or were pretending that nothing had ever happened.

Or at least she thought that until she noticed Mary Margaret slip away from the booth to go over to the counter to order some more coffee.

Regina furrowed her brow in curiosity and walked over to stand next to her ex-stepdaughter. It wasn't that she would usually care about what Snow and the wolf talked about, but she had the distinct feeling that if anyone was going to discuss the death of the mayor, then it would be Ruby. The woman had been one of the few people who had been willing to have at least a short conversation with her during her isolation.

"Has Emma left the station since yesterday?" Mary Margaret asked with a sigh as she fell down onto the stool and watched Ruby make her beverage.

"She came in for a to-go breakfast," Ruby frowned as she pushed the steaming mug towards her friend, "so…technically she did…for like fifteen minutes…"

Snow's shoulders slumped and she let out a sigh.

Regina frowned as she considered whether that expression on her face was more than just concern for her reclusive daughter.

"She's the sheriff, Snow, she has to look into Regina's…death…" the waitress replied and placed a hand over the other woman's in support.

Regina's eyebrows shot up when she could have sworn that she saw the woman flinch at the mention of her untimely demise. Did she actually care?

When Mary Margaret just smiled and walked away back over to her table, Regina blew out a breath. With a quick look over to Henry, the brunette decided that she should go and see exactly how Emma was 'looking in to' a shooting that she had witnessed.

She had arrived just in time to hear Gold explaining to the sheriff why she had to sign the adoption dissolution papers and she couldn't stop herself from making a snarky comment. Of course, she had come to expect that no one would hear her so when the saviour had all but shouted her name and almost fallen out of her chair, she had been both shocked and amused.

It was for this reason that she couldn't help herself from teasing the woman, even if she knew about as much about this ghost thing as the blonde woman did.

She brought herself out of her brief reminiscence and asked, "why would I haunt you out of all of the people in this town?"

Emma bit the inside of her cheek, before she said cautiously, "because…you hate me, right?"

Regina frowned and tilted her head, "I don't hate you, Emma," she replied.

The saviour was about to open her mouth, but she was stopped from saying anything by the sound of footsteps.

"Emma?" David called.

The blonde swallowed hard and called, "in here."

A moment later, Prince Charming appeared at the door with a smile on his face, though he looked very cautious.

"My shift starts now," he said, "you should go home and get some rest."

Emma thought to protest, as she had every other day this week; however, her eyes drifted over to the very vivid (and life-like) image of Regina Mills and she shook her head.

David followed her line of vision with a frown. When he saw that there was nothing of note in that direction, he looked back over toEmma with the intention of asking her if she was okay, but the woman just stood from her chair.

"You're right, I should go and sleep," she replied quickly before her father could question her sanity and she dashed out of the room as fast as possible.

* * *

Henry sunk further into the couch and continued pressing buttons on his controller. Once again, he could feel his grandmother's gaze burning into the back of his head from the kitchen and he began wishing that it was a school day,

The school had reopened four days after the 'incident', which was only one day following the funeral of the town's mayor.

Snow and David had suggested that Henry take some more time off considering the 'circumstances' but he had just shrugged and said that nothing had changed. He hadn't even spoken to Regina in six months, he had barely even heard anyone talk about her in that time. He had, of course, noticed her around town and caught her looking at him a few times, but he tended to just ignore her like everyone else. She wasn't doing anything evil anymore so she didn't deserve any admonishment; however, she also hadn't done anything particularly heroic.

The 'school incident' was the clear exception to that rule and Henry was having a hard time reconciling a woman who would stand in front of a gun with the Evil Queen.

When Jefferson had pulled out the weapon, Snow White instantly threw her grandson behind her back.

The Mad Hatter started saying how he wanted the Evil Queen to be there and it hadn't taken long for the purple smoke to start billowing in the assembly hall.

If it hadn't been for those final words, he probably would have actually admitted that he missed her and that the sound of the gunshot was the most terrifying thing he had ever experienced in his young life.

He decided that seeing the woman who openly said that she was no longer his mother wasn't something he could do, especially after the adoption dissolution. It was for this reason that when the rest of his family had woken up to attend the funeral of Regina Mills, he had just gone to the diner so that Ruby could watch him.

However, that did mean that his last image of the woman who had raised him for ten years was of her crumpling to the ground. In that moment, he had been sure that she would be fine and that there was no reason to spend every moment staring at her in the hospital, but she never woke up again after she had lost consciousness.

She had promised that she would never give up on him and then she publicly disowned him.

Now she was dead.

"Henry," Snow called and ran over to him with a concerned look on her face.

The boy blinked a couple of times, hoping that the tears he felt in his eyes were not on his cheeks and he looked down at his hands clutched around his controller. In his thoughts, he had seemingly forgotten that he was playing a game. The sprite on the screen kept hitting a wall over and over again with a pixelated sword. His grandmother had obviously heard the sound of his hands essentially crushing the plastic of the N64 controller. He knew that he had a Xbox One but when he found out that Emma had a thing for older consoles, he made it his mission to play as many retro games as possible. Unfortunately, that meant a louder controller.

"Are you okay?" Snow asked with her eyebrows pinched together as she inspected the expression on the boy's face.

Henry swallowed hard and shook his head and he leaned forward to place the controller on the table.

He just shrugged, "game is too hard," he mumbled and fell back against the couch,

Snow opened her mouth to say something, since Henry hadn't appeared to be playing the game properly but she was cut short by the door flying open.

The attention of both of the brunettes shot to the door as the saviour walked in.

"Emma," Snow smiled broadly, but the smile faltered slightly when she noticed the slight gauntness of the woman's face and the way that her eyes kept flickering to as if she was hoping that she wasn't the only person who could see something.

"Emma?" Snow repeated.

The blonde blinked and finally looked up to her mother before she turned to gaze back to whatever was holding her attention and she just shook her head.

"I really need to go to bed," she muttered before she dashed up the stairs with no further explanation.

* * *

Emma turned over on her side and groaned as wakefulness began returning to her mind. Though sleeping on her bed was certainly more comfortable than the couch in her office, she still didn't feel particularly well rested. There was just too much going on for her mind to rest peacefully, she was just relieved that she couldn't remember what dream/nightmare she most likely had. However, she did kind of wish that what had happened in the station was just a bad dream.

There was absolutely no way that Regina could be a ghost that only she could see, right? Not only was the ghost thing was completely ridiculous, but the idea that only she could see her meant that she was truly hallucinating. It wasn't as though she and Regina had ever been close. Surely, if someone would have been able to see her spirit, then it should have been Henry? Even if the boy seemed intent upon the fact that he didn't love Regina, Emma knew that it was only a matter of time before he realised exactly what his mother being dead meant. He would eventually realise that she wouldn't be coming back and that he would never have the chance to rekindle the mother-son relationship that he would soon miss. Enna just wasn't sure how she was going to help when that happened and seeing Regina's ghost made her feel far less qualified to offer advice about dealing with grief.

"You've only managed to worry your mother more," someone said from across the room and Emma closed her eyes in frustration before she turned around to see the former mayor of Storybrooke sat on her dresser. Despite the position, the woman still somehow managed to look regal with one leg crossed over the other.

"Since when do you worry about Mary Margaret?" Emma shot back and hiked herself up on her elbows. Maybe she finally had definitive proof that this was a hallucination?

"Don't mistake a comment for compassion. I'm just suggesting that perhaps you shouldn't have said only seven words to Snow and Henry," Regina replied.

Emma swallowed hard and shook her head. She allowed her eyes to drift over to her alarm clock to see that she had only been asleep for a mere two hours, which meant that she hadn't had nearly enough sleep to stave off the hallucinations.

"I need help," Emma muttered and threw her blanket aside. She wasn't sure where she was going since her father would still be at the station, but she knew that she couldn't stay here. She had no doubt that her mother was waiting for her to come down the stairs, which meant that she would probably hear her daughter talking to herself.

"You still think that this is a hallucination, dear?" Regina asked with a quirked eyebrow.

Emma's eyes turned back to the woman still sat on her dresser and she allowed them to just take in the sight. She just looked so real and she acted a lot like the Regina she had known before the curse had broken (maybe being a ghost meant that she no longer felt the need to act despondent?) but that wasn't particularly proof that this was actually happening. Plus, there was also the fact that she was wearing the blue dress that they had laid her to rest in, instead of the blood stained pant-suit she had been wearing on the day of the 'school incident' or the hospital gown that she had died in.

"You have to be a hallucination…you're dead…" Emma replied and looked down at her lap as she felt a couple tears pooling at the corner of her eyes.

"It wouldn't make much sense if I was a ghost of a person who is alive, would it?" Regina asked and Emma looked up from her lap with a frown.

"Why me though?" the blonde asked.

Regina frowned and tilted her head, "I'm afraid that I don't know what you mean…"

"Why am I the only person who can see you?"

The brunette opened and closed her mouth a couple times as she considered this. She had just been so happy that she wouldn't need to wander Storybrooke alone with no one able to see her for the rest of eternity that she hadn't actually stopped to consider just why this was happening.

"It takes magic to tether a soul to a plane of existence," Regina replied as she thought this through, "which means that the answer to almost any question you have is…"

"Magic," Emma sighed. "That is such a cop out, Regina, it wouldn't kill you to just say that you don't know."

The former queen raised an eyebrow at the blonde's choice of words and the colour drained from the younger woman's face when she realised what she had said.

"I didn't mean…" she began but Regina just held up her hand to stop the woman from rambling.

"Calm down, Miss Swan. I'll admit that I don't know anything about any of this," she sighed as she reached across to touch one of the t-shirts thrown onto the top of the dresser and her hand went straight through it. She was slowly learning the rules of this whole spirit thing. So far, she knew that she could touch structures like door frames and the surface of the dresser with no problem, but when it came to touching something that could possibly be visible to anyone but Emma, then her hand would go straight through it. The thought was frustrating since that meant that Emma would be her only source of entertainment, she couldn't even pick up a book to read so that she could pass the time.

Emma bit the inside of her cheek and nodded in understanding, "so…how can I find out for sure if I am hallucinating or not?"

"Is my word not good enough?" Regina shot back.

"Technically, if you're my imagination, then your word is just my word," Emma replied.

The brunette raised both of her eyebrows at the increasingly confused expression on the saviour's face and she said, "perhaps if I take you to my vault, you can find something that might prove to you that I'm not a figment of your imagination?"

"Your vault?" Emma asked.

 **A/N Reviews would be really very much appreciated :D**


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter five

 _Henry stuck his tongue out as he adjusted a piece of glitter on the card he had painstakingly made at school two days earlier._

 _The eight-year-old boy had been hiding his own personal masterpiece since Friday in the hopes of presenting an actual surprise; however, the longer he waited, the more he found himself adding to the card. He rubbed his fingers together to try and get rid of the glue as his eyes shot over to his Captain America alarm clock._

 _It was 7.30 am, which was two hours earlier than he would usually wake up on a Sunday morning, but he knew for certain that his mother would already be awake making herself some coffee. She usually liked to get a head start on e-mails before Monday, but he was determined that she wouldn't be doing that on Mother's Day._

 _The boy looked over the card one more time as he considered whether it would be humanly possible to add anything, before he finally made his way towards the door and then down-the-stairs towards the kitchen._

 _As expected, his mother stood behind the counter in her dressing gown staring intently at the coffee-maker._

 _He had, of course, considered surprising her with breakfast in bed but he soon discovered that he couldn't reach the counter and it would certainly put a damper on Mother's Day if he fell off a stool and broke something whilst trying to make some toast it was for this reason that he had decided against this course of action and had instead decided to find another source of breakfast, which meant saving up his allowance each week in order to be able to buy them both something at Granny's._

 _The boy smiled when he realised that the groggy woman hadn't seen him yet and he padded over to the counter as quietly as he could in his Marvel onesie. Finally, he made it to the stool and hopped up onto it with a triumphant smile as he slammed the cared down onto the counter:_

 _"Happy Mother's Day!" he all but shouted._

 _Regina's eyes widened and she jumped back slightly. Her tired mind hadn't quite reached thinking about what day it was passed knowing that she didn't have work today. She honestly thought that Mother's Day was actually the week after._

 _Henry laughed at the confused expression on his mother's face and pushed the card towards her, "I made you this," he stated._

 _The brunette seemed to finally catch up with what was going on and she smiled as she pulled the card towards herself. It was obvious that the young boy had spent a great deal of time (and materials) making it and she ran her hand across the 3D effect he had created on the lettering. She looked up from it and smiled broadly at her son._

 _"Thank you, this is amazing," she said, now looking fully awake._

 _A grin spread across Henry's face and he said, "you're not doing any work today, I've got plans for us…"_

 _Regina quirked at eyebrow as she imagined what grand adventure an eight-year-old could have planned. The year before, he had woken up a lot later and had gotten her to watch movies with him basically all day, not that she could complain about the prospect of doing the same again._

 _"And what are these plans?" she asked with a little laugh._

 _"I've got enough money for us both to get our usuals at Granny's," he said rather proudly, "and then we can do whatever you want to do after as long as it isn't work."_

 _Regina smiled and walked around the counter so that she could envelope him in a hug and drop a kiss onto his forehead._

 _"Thank you, my little prince," she said, before she released him and added, "I suppose that I should go and get ready."_

Henry blinked himself out of the memory and sighed as he looked around to make sure that no one was around to see how close he was to tears before he blew out a breath and fell back against the couch.

It had been happening quite a lot recently. He would catch himself thinking about Regina before he had found that book. She may have been strict, but he could hardly deny that she loved him and savoured every moment that she could. However, he found that the memories were somehow marred by the realisation that the woman had either spent all of her time at work or at home with him because they had been living in a cursed town whereby he was the only person that she could actually stand being in the same room as.

The thought of how happy she used to look was also tainted by her final words. The woman who had done all that she could to get the saviour to leave town was a far cry from the woman who he had heard talking during 'the school incident'.

It wasn't helping that everyone he had interacted with since it had happened tended to speak in soft voices or gave him sympathetic looks as he walked past them. Then there were his grandparents who had been treating him like a piece of china that would break at any moment. But he was determined that he wouldn't be reaching that breaking point. All he needed was to push it aside until he forgot about her completely, which would be easier if people would stop treating him like his mom had just died. His mother was still alive as far as he was concerned; Regina had decided to dissolve her rights to motherhood in the eyes of the law, so it seemed pretty black and white in his mind. The only connection that he currently held to the woman was his name but he hadn't found it in himself to go to Emma and demand that she change his last name to 'Swan', which was something that he attributed to the fact that the saviour was never around, there was no way that it had anything to do with the fact that he didn't really want to be known as 'Henry Daniel Swan'.

It was for all of these confusing reasons that he decided that he could no longer be in this apartment. Some fresh air away from his grandparents would surely do him some good and now as the perfect time while Snow was at Granny's getting some food and Emma was wherever she said she was going when she ran out of the apartment earlier.

It only took a couple of minutes for the boy to grab his backpack and pull his sneakers on. His hand hovered over his phone for a moment but he ultimately just left it on the coffee table since he knew that Emma would just use it to track him. It wasn't as though Storybrooke was a particularly dangerous place and he wasn't planning to be gone for long anyway.

So, he pushed himself up from the couch and ran towards the door before he could talk himself out of it (or before Snow came through the door with a to-go bag and the insufferable smile that she had been wearing since everything had started).

When he started walking, he had no idea where he was going or for how long, but the more he received curious looks from passersby the faster he allowed his legs to carry him until he was actually running towards the woods.

Once he passed the tree line, he placed both hands on his knees and took a couple of deep breaths before he straightened his legs and took a quick look around.

He swallowed hard when he realised that he must have ran much further than he had ever planned to and, when he looked over his shoulder, it occurred to him that he had no idea where he actually was.

After a couple of calming breaths, he considered jut how big the woods the words actually were. Finally, he decided that if he just kept walking that he would eventually come to the barrier which he could follow to the tow line and then he would be able to find his way back to the Charming's loft from there. Plus, it wasn't as though he was in any particular rush to return to his grandmother who would have probably watched him eat as she continued in her quest to silently try and will him to talk about his feelings.

At least out here, he could just focus on walking and not think about how he would never get the opportunity to talk to Regina again. He didn't have to think about how he would never have the chance to reconcile with her after she got her redemption and became one of the heroes as he had always secretly planned to.

Henry blinked away some tears and looked down at his moving feet when it occurred to him that he was currently thinking about not thinking about Regina.

A moment later, his foot caught in a protruding tree root and he felt his entire body launch forward with nothing around him to grab onto. He soon found himself tumbling down a small incline until he hit the bottom with a little thud.

Henry rolled over on his side and groaned deeply as he closed his eyes in frustration. This whole running away thing for a while may have not been the best of ideas. Getting some space wasn't exactly worth laying alone in the woods with a couple of broken bones and no way of calling anyone for help.

After a few moments, however, it occurred to him that none of the stinging pain he felt was quite intense enough to possibly mean that he had broken anything, but he had certainly messed up his clothes pretty good.

Henry sat up and frowned down at the dirt on his jeans and the small rip in the pocket of his shirt. He pulled his finger up to inspect the rip and he wondered how long it would take his mother to sew it; however, he quickly put the thought aside when he realised that Emma wasn't exactly the sewing-type. Maybe he could ask his grandmother to fix it?

The boy just shook his head and decided that he could deal with it later, right now, he needed to focus on trying to find his way to the town barrier. He pushed himself to his feet and continued walking forward with a tiny limp that lessened as he kept on forward.

After about five minutes, he found that the trees began to look much further apart. The boy frowned at the sight since he was pretty sure that this was supposed to be a much more gradual process; however, he decided that he couldn't complain about it if it meant that he would be finding his way out of the woods soon.

He felt a lump form his throat, though, when he finally made it to the tree line and saw something that he was pretty sure wasn't supposed to be there. Emma had told him about the Mad Hatter's mansion and he was fairly certain that this wasn't it. It was certainly a mansion, but it just looked far more Victorian and expensive than what he had imagined the Hatter's now vacant home to look like.

For a second, he thought back to his storybook and wondered whether this could be the home of the witch from Hansel and Gretel. The witch hadn't come to Storybrooke as far as he knew and he was fairly certain that she was dead, since she would have probably come after Hansel and Gretel when the curse had broken if she was alive.

Before Henry could think more about the issue, he realised that his feet were already taking him towards the unfamiliar house. He rationalised that the owner could be one of the good guys who would help him find his way home or if the place was abandoned, then there might be a phone that he could use to call someone to come and get him. He wouldn't admit it aloud, but he was actually starting to become afraid that there was a chance that he wouldn't find his way home before the sun started setting and the idea of trying to find the town line in the dark was more terrifying than it probably should have been. There was also the fact that Emma would probably kill him for making her worry for so long, she may not have been as strict as Regina but that didn't mean that he didn't think that she could punish him if she was angry enough.

The boy came up to the front door of the mansion and lightly knocked on the door, "hello?" He called. Henry swallowed hard when the door creaked open. He stood still for a moment as he inspected the wooden structure, it appeared as though there was nothing actually keeping the door completely closed, there wasn't even a door knob on it. That had to mean for definite that no one actually lived here, right?

When he received no reply, he considered his options for a moment. It would be simple enough to just turn on his heels and go back to his original plan, but his curiosity got the best of him. He knew that he wouldn't be able to get this place out of his mind when he finally got home. He would only think about who owned this mansion and his active imagination would drive him crazy until he finally just found his way back here (assuming he would be able to do so again).

It was for this reason that he just allowed his feet to carry him further into the house.

"Hello?" He called again as he looked around the sparsely furnished home. He frowned when he noticed that it really did look as though no one had ever lived here. Everything just looked so clean, almost as if it had been built about five minutes ago. The boy continued to walk forward until he crossed the room into the next one.

Instantly, his mouth fell open.

It looked as though four rooms had been merged together to form a massive library with rows and rows of prestige tomes placed lovingly on each available space of the hundreds of shelves.

The brunette let out a breath of shock mixed with envy and he turned around to see the shelves that rose right up to the ceiling on the other side of the room.

"Wow," he breathed.

"Impressive, isn't it?"

Henry jumped back and looked around the room to see where that voice had come from. He was sure that he should have been able to feel the presence of another person in the room, but it wasn't until his eyes flew over to the one book that was out of place that he noticed a man sat cross-legged on the floor, leaning against the shelve behind him with a book opened on his lap. Henry took a couple of breaths as he tried to remember what he was supposed to do in situations like this. However, it quickly occurred to him that he really wasn't supposed to walk into a stranger's house to begin with, so he had never really been taught what to do when he met a stranger in his own home, but he knew that he wasn't supposed to trust someone who he had just met.

His mouth went dry and he opened it to say that he should be going; however, no sound came out and he instead just started taking steps backwards.

The man looked at him in amusement and Henry finally said, "I…I'm sorry…I was just looking for a way home…but I'll go…"

The older of the pair raised an eyebrow at the younger one and closed the book he had been reading and placed it by his side before he stood up.

"I can see it in your eyes that you don't actually want to leave, Henry," he said, "I find it hard to believe that you would want to leave such a well-stocked library."

Henry was about to say that he really needed to go, but he closed his mouth when he realised that the man had just said his name. He knew that he should probably be running away from him as quickly as his feet would take him; however, he just felt as though he could trust this man. He took the opportunity of the silence to inspect the man now standing before him. He looked to be about forty-ish with a bright smile on his face, he could have been mistook for a villain, but Henry was sure that he actually wanted to help and he wasn't sure why that was. There was also the fact that he was still dressed in Enchanted Forest attire that confirmed Henry's theory that maybe this mansion hadn't actually been in Storybrooke for long.

"Who are you?" He asked with narrowed eyes, since he knew that Emma would probably kill him if anything happened because he trusted a random man, even if he tended to be right about people (or so he thought).

"Should I be hurt that my only reader doesn't recognise the author of my book?" The man replied.

Henry brought his eyebrows together in thought before they shot up and and he asked, "you wrote my story book?"

The man nodded and smiled broadly as he said, "yes, my name is Isaac but I suppose my official title would be the Author."

* * *

Emma had to admit that she was still a little freaked out by the way that Regina had simply walked through her car door and took a seat after she had tried to open the door to the yellow bug. The brunette had frowned at it for a moment before the thought to just try and sit down had occurred to her and Emma had just started at her blankly for a few moments until she realised that she was receiving curious looks from people walking past her. In that moment, Emma decided that if this was actually real and not some elaborate mental breakdown, then she would need to work on not looking like a complete freak to the rest of the town when she was having a conversation with someone that no one else could see.

When she had finally gotten into the car and had been told to start driving to the graveyard, Emma had felt her throat constrict in fear. She had never particularly been freaked out by cemeteries, but there was just something about being haunted by the dead that had made her a little more jumpy then usual. However, the blonde had still started driving not a moment after Regina had told her where to go and the pair were now walking towards the Mills Mausoleum.

Emma's steps faltered when the reached the entrance and Regina frowned at the woman.

"What's wrong?" The former-mayor asked as she turned on her heels to look at the blonde.

The younger woman opened her mouth, but she found that she couldn't quite explain her apprehension. The last time that she had been to this building had been during the funeral. At the time, the though of having Regina's body perfectly preserved by magic had seemed like a great idea, but now she wasn't so sure. If she walked into the mausoleum and saw the body, then she felt as though that would just confirm her theory that she was going crazy, it would confirm that the woman she had been talking to was actually dead and that there was no way that she could possibly be in front of her right. Since the curse had broken, she was slowly getting used to the idea that almost anything was possible, but this just seemed so implausible to her.

"Nothing," she finally replied and motioned for Regina to continue.

The woman just rolled her eyes and proceeded to walk straight through the closed door. Emma jumped back slightly and closed her eyes in frustration as she took a couple of deep breaths. She didn't know quite why she found that to be quite so freaky when she was fairly certain that she had seen stranger things than a person walking straight through a solid structure, even if nothing came to mind in that moment.

Emma sighed again when she realised that she would need to actually move and she walked forward to push the door open so that she could see the woman standing on the other side of it.

"You need to warn me when you're going to do shit like that, Regina," Emma exclaimed, which just caused the other woman to roll her eyes and cross her arms over her chest.

"And you need to get used to the idea that your ghostly companion can walk through things, unless you wish to constantly open doors for me?" Regina shot back, "people are going to start thinking that you take forever to leave a room."

Emma just shook her head in exasperation as she tried to remind herself that she had technically wanted to spend more time with this woman before everything had happened. Though, she wasn't exactly sure that spending every waking moment with her was what she wanted. The blonde had started to notice that the brunette had yet to actually be more than five feet away from her since she had shown up at the station. She was going to comment on it, but she decided that she could do that once she found out whether this a hallucination or not, even if she was legitimately worried that there may be some reason that Regina had to be with her at all times now. It wouldn't be good for her mental state.

Regina motioned for the blonde to walk further into the mausoleum but her steps faltered when her eyes fell onto the class coffin. The brunette followed her gaze and her mouth fell open slightly.

She knew that she had been through a lot in her life, but she was pretty sure that there were not many people who had been forced to look at their own dead body. For a moment, she simply allowed herself to take in the sight of herself in the blue dress, she just so peaceful, it was strange.

"Why that dress?" Regina finally asked when turned back around to look at the blonde.

Emma blinked out of her own thoughts about the sight of the two versions of Regina Mills before and she frowned, "what do you mean?"

"You have never seen me wear that dress, so why would you choose to lay me to rest in it?"

The blonde brought her bottom lip into her mouth for a moment as she hoped that the red hue she could feel forming across her cheeks wasn't that obvious in this low lighting, "I felt weird looking through your closest and I had no idea what you liked the best, so…I just went with what I thought you would look good in," Emma explained quickly, before her eyes took a second to travel over how the dress looked on the version of Regina who was standing up. She swallowed hard as she thought that it certainly looked better on her than it did on the woman in the coffin, but that could have just been because the alive Regina just looked better to her overall.

"I see," Regina nodded with a suspicious look in her eyes as she considered what the expression on the saviour's face could mean. The brunette had known since she had met the birth mother of her son that she was attracted to the woman, but that had quickly been overshadowed by the deep set anger she felt at the blonde who she thought was trying to take her son away from her. Now though, as she inspected the woman, she couldn't help but think about adorable she looked when she was freaked out. Regina just shook her head and gestured towards her father's coffin, "you need to push that aside to get to my vault."

Emma nodded and walked over to it. She decided that this would be the ultimate test of whether or not she was seeing things. She had never known about any vault and there was certainly no indication in any of the town's records that there was any underground constructions underneath the graveyard. That meant that if she tried to push aside the grave of Henry Sr and nothing happened, that she would be able to go to Archie and tell him that she was officially having a mental breakdown.

The blonde placed her hand against the stone and took a moment to think about what she actually wanted to happen.

On one hand, if this moved, then it would mean that she was really being followed around by the spirit of Regina Mills. As much as she wanted to be able to spend time with the woman, she would much rather be able to do so with a Regina that other people could see. On the other hand, however, if the structure didn't budge, it would mean that she was seeing things and that Regina would probably go away after she got some help, which would in turn mean that Regina was actually dead and gone forever.

"Emma?" Regina called with her eyebrows pinched together in confusion/concern.

The saviour jumped back slightly and realised that she must have been standing still for longer than could be considered normal. She shot a quick look over to Regina (making a point to avoid looking at the clear coffin only a few feet away from her) and she nodded to confirm that she was actually fine before she finally pushed the coffin aside.

To her surprise, it moved aside with relative ease to reveal a set of stone steps leading downwards. The blonde blinked a couple of times at the poorly lit stair well and briefly considered whether she was about to be taken to be murdered. For all she knew, this could still be a part of the hallucination and she had actually been drugged by someone who was out to get her for some reason (her money would be on Dr Whale since he still seemed to give off the whole mad scientist vibe, especially when she had questioned him about Regina the other day).

Despite this, she quickly decided that there was no way that she could believe that she was currently living in a town full of fairy-tale characters and not believe that there was the possibility that a person could return as a spirit after death. She had to at least entertain the idea that Regina was really with her, especially since that would open up the possibility that there was some way to reunite her spirit with her body (even if she had been told more times than she could count that the rules of magic prohibit bringing a person back from the dead).

The blonde cautiously began to descend the stairs and frowned when no light appeared to reveal her surroundings to her and she instinctively reached out her right hand to place it onto the wall, almost as if she had to make sure that there was actually something to hold onto. She had been through some pretty strange things in the last year, but she didn't think that she would be able to handle falling down a rabbit-hole, especially after the terrible week that she'd had.

"You need to light the candles," Regina announced from behind her and Emma closed her eyes in frustration. The idea of a ghost was somehow ten times creepier down here than it had been in the cemetery.

After a moment to catch her breath, Emma replied, "how can I light candles in a pitch black room?"

The blonde could practically feel Regina rolling her eyes behind her and she blew out a breath of frustration.

"I believe that your little adventure in the Enchanted Forest proved that you are more than capable of magic, Emma," Regina sighed, "you can't tell me that you haven't at least tried to light a candle or two since then?"

The saviour just shook her head and turned to look at the woman who she could just about see in the very low light, "I've been…busy since then…"

Regina quirked an eyebrow at her, she could somehow tell that was code for saying that she was in fact terrified of magic and had no interest in experimenting with something so dangerous. For someone who was supposed to be the great and fearless saviour, Regina had to admit that it was cute how anything out of the ordinary freaked her out.

"You have the ability to make almost anything happen, Miss Swan, it would be a waste of your talents if you pretend that you don't have these powers."

"It's not like I have anyone who can teach me," Emma practically pouted, "and I don't want to burn anything down…"

Regina rolled her eyes again and said, "you need to allow yourself to stop holding the magic back for a moment and think of what you want to happen. You might not be aware of this, Emma, but your body is constantly fighting against the power inside it, you just need to relax and allow the magic to come to the surface, once it does, you will be able to imagine what you want to happen and then it will."

Emma shot the woman a sceptical look, but she still turned back around and looked out into the darkness. With a deep, steadying breath, she closed her eyes and tried to do exactly what Regina had told her to do, even if she was sure that there was no way in hell that she would be able to do magic voluntarily, without some kind of crisis urging her on. The teleportation that she had achieved during 'the school incident' had been an anomaly, even if it had felt amazing at the time to allow the magic to openly flow through her veins as she achieved exactly what she wanted without a moment of hesitation. On that day, she'd had the thought of protecting Regina to urge her on; now the only threat was having to walk into a dark room.

The blonde cracked one eye open after a few seconds of silence and she sighed deeply when she still saw nothing but darkness.

"This isn't going to work, you should have just told me to bring my flashlight," Emma said.

"Why would the saviour possibly need a flashlight?" the brunette shot back.

The blonde just rolled her eyes and shook her head and Regina took a step down so that she was standing next to her.

"You defeated my mother, you are more than capable of lighting a candle," the former Evil Queen said, this time sounding almost supportive.

Emma swallowed hard and nodded as she closed her eyes again and allowed herself to imagine a candle lighting, just as she had imagined herself outside the assembly hall on that horrible day. The difference on that day had of course been that failing wasn't an option. In that moment, she had known for certain that if she allowed herself to be blocked by her inherent need to not believe in something, then Regina would be hurt, not that had done much good for the woman whose spirit was currently standing next to her.

Emma felt the familiar power run through her veins again and she allowed herself to imagine that these candles had to be alight, as if it was a matter of life or death. This seemed to do the trick as light began to infiltrate her closed eyes. She opened them and smiled when she realised that it had actually worked, apparently her saviour tendencies could make her achieve anything if she convinced herself that she was protecting someone?

However, this smile quickly fell when her mind processed exactly what she was looking at. She hadn't known what to expect when Regina had told her that they would be going to a vault full of magical items but she was certain that this wasn't it.

Everything looked immaculate (which could have something to do with the fact that it was only lit by candles), it could have almost just been a normal storage space if it wasn't for the white marble everywhere. However, when she started looking more closely, it became clear that this was not some random storage space, there were items lovingly placed around the room that were clearly magical.

Emma's eyebrows shot up and she asked, "is that an alchemy set?!"

Regina frowned and looked over to her potion's station and nodded, "I suppose it is…"

"That is so cool," the blonde breathed and Regina just looked at her in amusement.

"I believe that you're missing the point, Emma," the brunette said as she gestured towards the bookshelf across the room.

Emma sighed as she looked over to the piles of books before walked over to them to begin sifting through them. However, before she reached the first pile, her phone started buzzing in her pocket. The blonde frowned and she considered that she should just ignore it and focus on the task at hand, but she ultimately decided against it. Since that day, she'd basically kept her phone grasped tightly in her hand at all times, she just couldn't put aside the thought of what would have happened if she'd gotten the call before Regina instead of being in her room trying on an endless parade of clothes. She couldn't live with herself if something happened to someone who she cared about just because the saviour didn't answer her phone when she was supposed to.

The blonde pulled the phone out of her pocket and frowned at Mary Margaret's name on the screen (she hadn't gotten round to changing the name to 'Snow' and certainly she hadn't considered changing it to 'mom').

"Hello?" She answered with a hint of confusion in her tone. As much as she knew that her mother wanted to make sure she was okay, the woman hadn't done much passed sending David to make sure that she was getting enough sleep at the station.

"Thank god," Snow breathed at the sound of her daughter's voice, "I went to Granny's to get Henry and I some food and when I got back…" she rushed out, clearly afraid of how the blonde was going to react to the news.

Emma brought her free hand to pinch the bridge of her nose, "he ran away," she supplied.

Snow let out a sigh of relief when she realised that she wouldn't need to explain much more, "his cell phone is still on the table…"

Emma sighed, that sounded about right, "it's okay, we know that he can't leave town, we'll just need to start looking…it can't take that long to cover Storybrooke, right?"

"The town is bigger than you think," Regina scoffed.

The saviour looked up and frowned at the woman who had her arms crossed over her chest.

"Emma?" Snow asked.

Said woman blinked when she realised that she must of missed whatever he mother had just said and she made a reply that she hoped would make sense, "can you call David and ask him to start asking people if they've seen Henry?"

The brunette on the other end of the line was silent for a moment before she said, "okay…"

"Thanks," Emma replied awkwardly before she muttered a quick 'goodbye' and she hung up the phone. She shoved her phone into her pocket and let out a heavy sigh.

Regina quirked an eyebrow at the blonde as she began walking towards the exit and she called, "what are you doing?"

Emma stopped in her tracks and turned back to look at the spirit and gestured towards the exit, "I'm going to start looking for Henry…"

The brunette rolled her eyes and shook her head, "Storybrooke really is bigger than it looks, Emma, it could take hours to look for him."

"Do you have any suggestions?" The saviour sighed, wishing that Henry could see the concern written across her face in that moment, it would be all of the proof that he would ever need to know that she cared about him.

Regina pointed back over to the pile of tomes and said, "I would obviously suggest a locator spell."

 **A/N Hope you enjoyed and please let me know what you thought :D**


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter six

"The Author?" Henry repeated as he tried to process exactly what that could mean. "The Author of what?"

Isaac smiled at just how confused the future Truest Believer looked, he was sure that this boy was pretty much supposed to believe (and be excited by) pretty much anything that included magic.

"I am the Author of everything," Isaac replied, "my job is simply to observe and write about everything around me."

Henry frowned, though he felt he felt a distinct excitement forming in his stomach at the thought that such a position existed. He had always wanted to be an author, but being the Author sounded so much more exciting. However, he realised that he had no proof past a library full of books, that this man was who he claimed to be.

"Is that how you knew my name?" Henry asked, desperately trying to sound sceptical through his excitement.

"Not only are you my only devout reader, but are also instrumental to one of the most interesting stories that i have ever had the pleasure of writing about, of course I know your name," the man replied as if all this should be obvious.

The brunette boy blinked a couple of times and looked over his shoulder, wondering whether the man would chase him if he ran. However, he quickly decided against when he realised that he was already far too intrigued by this whole 'Author' business.

He opened his mouth to say something but nothing came out as his mind buzzed with a million questions and he had no idea what he wanted to ask first.

Isaac smiled at the sight as he remembered he had felt when he first discovered that the Author existed. It had been the moment that his life had changed for the better.

However, he had never been particularly happy with some of the stories that his predecessor had written. It all felt very good vs evil, far too black and white for his taste. When you knew that the Evil Queen was going to be defeated by the end of the narrative, was there really any point in reading it at all? It all felt far too predictable and uninteresting to him. Which was why he was more than disappointed to learn that he wouldn't be able to alter the stories that had already been written and it was also why he decided to make it his mission to find a way to do so. That led him to his current plan which would basically kill two birds with one stone.

He would be able to have the apprentice that he desperately needed and said prospective-apprentice had the ability to change the course of one of the stories that had bothered him the most: that of the Evil Queen. He just found it very unbelievable that the town would just continue on as if nothing had happened (with the exception perhaps of Emma Swan and Archie Hopper)/ Even more ridiculous was the idea that his original master thought that Henry would just be convinced for the rest of his life that his 'real mom' was still alive whilst the woman who raised him was doomed to wander Storybrooke forever. It just wasn't fair that would be the fate of Regina Mills because of what the Evil Queen did all of those decades ago and he was determined to fix it.

"So, you just watch and write?" Henry asked, having had seemingly chosen from his extensive list of questions.

"Mostly," Isaac replied, "though I'm not able to rewrite stories that have already been written."

Henry frowned at the news and tried to work through the implications of what the man could possibly mean. However, he quickly decided that he didn't understand.

"Already been written?" he asked with his brows knit together in concentration.

"Some stories are so important that they have been written for longer than you can possibly imagine. For example, the story of Snow White and the Evil Queen," Isaac explained and smiled slightly when he noticed the boy flinched at the mention of the so-called antagonist of that story. Perhaps it would be easier than he thought to convince the boy to give his mother a second chance? There was clearly still a part of him that cared about Regina Mills, even if his stubborn mind wouldn't allow him to admit it aloud.

The boy shrugged after a moment of thought, "why would you need to change that story?" he asked.

"Because according to my predecessor, the Evil Queen sought her revenge because Snow White was prettier than her. Now, you can't possibly believe that to be true based upon what you know about Regina?"

Henry opened and closed his mouth a few times as he tried to think of a possible explanation as to how that could make sense; however, nothing actually came out of his mouth. When he really thought about it, that character motivation made very little sense to anyone who actually knew Regina Mills. The woman certainly took pride in her appearance, but not to the extent whereby she would be willing to plot murder of the 'fairest of them all'.

When the boy didn't say anything, Isaac just continued, "that would make for a very boring story, especially for such a complex character," he said, with his face slightly scrunched up as if he was in deep thought, "and that whole 'they lived happily ever after' business is just ridiculous. It doesn't really tell you anything about how the story ended."

Henry's eyebrows shot up in surprise at the passion in the man's voice, it was clear that this Author was dead set against the way that his former master used to write his stories. Of course, the boy would have never thought that there was someone who wrote the story of what was essentially his life/family history. He had always believed in fate, sure, but he never imagined that a single man would be responsible for all of it.

"You can't just change the story," Henry argued, though he was unable to offer any kind of elaboration since he couldn't think of a single counter to anything Isaac had said.

The man sighed rather dramatically and began shaking his head, looking almost disappointed.

"I believe that the story has already ended, Henry, the Evil Queen is dead and now you can live happily ever after, right?" Isaac replied, and stopped himself from sneering at the boy. He may be the most stubborn boy that he had ever met, but the fact remained that he had recently lost his mother. It would eventually hit him, especially with what he had planned. Henry realising exactly what his mother's death meant would be instrumental to him fixing the mistakes of his former master. "What would be the harm in changing things now?"

The boy just frowned more deeply, he had officially lost track of this conversation. Why did the man care so much about Regina? Plus, he was fairly sure that there was no way that the woman would be able to get her happy ending now, so why would he think that there was any point in changing things when they were already over?

"I'm disappointed, Henry," Isaac sighed as he leaned down to pick up the leather-bound tome he had been reading when Henry had walked in, "I had hoped that you would be the perfect apprentice…"

The brunette's eyes widened at the words and he actually took a couple of steps towards the man and raised a hand, almost in surrender.

"You wanted me to be your apprentice?" he asked with excitement laced through every syllable, Isaac was sure that the boy would be physically vibrating if he could.

"I wanted the young man who believed so fiercely that the curse would break that he tracked down his birth mother and succeeded in convincing her that she is actually the saviour," Isaac replied.

"I am the one who did that," Henry argued.

Isaac quirked an eyebrow at how close the boy sounded to desperation in that moment. He had known exactly how Henry was going to react considering that he knew basically everything about every 'character' who resided in Storybrooke, which is exactly why he had known that Henry Mills would one day be his apprentice before he was even born. However, it was painfully obvious that this boy was nowhere close to being the qualified Author, but that was where the teaching came in. It was going to take some effort to help Henry no longer see the world as completely black and white, but he was determined to do so to ensure that the next Author wouldn't be like his former master. He would hate for some poor person to suffer in the future because the Author believed he was writing a good story. He needed Henry to understand that he would be dealing with real people's lives rather than just thinking of them as just characters as the last Author had.

Isaac took a few steps forward so that he was within arm's length of the boy and reached out to hand him the book that he had been clutching tightly.

Henry accepted the tome with no hesitation but furrowed his brow when he looked down at the cover that was completely blank except for the gold trim; he turned it over in his hands to see the spine was the same way. Other than that, it could almost pass for his storybook.

"What is this?" he asked, though his frown deepened when he looked up and found that no one was standing in front of him and all of the bookshelves were now completely empty.

He was about to call out Isaac's name, but he was interrupted by the sound of a door slamming behind. He hears some mumbled word from the other room, though he wasn't quite able to decipher exactly what was being said, he knew exactly who it was.

His suspicions were confirmed when Emma called, "Henry?"

The boy didn't say anything and just waited the couple of seconds that it took the woman to cross to the next room.

Emma sighed in relief when she came up to the doorway and saw the back of Henry. Despite Regina's constant assurance that the spell was working, she had still been rather sceptical.

"Told you," Regina sighed as she pointed at Henry.

Emma scowled at the woman, but decided against saying anything since she was working hard on the whole people not thinking she was crazy thing, though she sincerely hoped that Henry hadn't just heard the bickering that had just happened between she and Regina over the effectiveness of Henry's floating jumper.

Henry turned around just in time to see the piece of clothing fall from mid-air and into Emma's hand.

"What was that?" he asked with a frown.

"A locator spell," Emma replied, "you didn't give me much choice since you left your phone."

The boy could tell that she was pissed that he had ran away but there was also a certain amount of relief on her face. He knew better than to question how the woman suddenly knew how to perform a locator spell since it was obvious that she was already mad at him (plus, it probably just had something to do with just asking Rumple for help).

Emma frowned at the book in Henry's hands and the boy instantly also looked down at it; however, he frowned too when he saw the words 'Once Upon A Time' embossed upon the surface, it definitely hadn't been there before.

"You came out to a random mansion in the woods to read your storybook?" she asked, each word edged with anger, "Snow was terrified when you wasn't at the loft."

Henry took a deep breath as he began to consider just how he could explain what happened. He couldn't tell her that he felt suffocated sitting in the loft with his grandmother waiting for him to have a breakdown and he certainly couldn't tell her that a complete stranger had just asked him to become their apprentice. There was no way that she would ever, in a million years, allow him to do that especially since Emma Swan was well known for her innate mistrust of anyone knew and he was sure that Isaac would be no exception. Emma wouldn't be convinced by the argument that he trusted the man.

"I... just wanted some fresh air," he lied.

Emma narrowed her eyes at the boy who suddenly reminded her so much of his father. Though she was glad that Henry had ran to the woods and not out of Storybrooke, it was always a distinct possibility considering that he and the saviour were the only people able to cross the town line without losing their memories. Though she wasn't sure that she was supposed to be pleased that he had come into what could have been a complete stranger's home, even if it was just clearly an abandoned mansion from the inside.

"You're in so much trouble," Emma announced, though she trailed off when she realised that she had never actually had to punish him for anything before. She wasn't quite sure how exactly she was supposed to do so.

Henry frowned at her when she didn't say anything as he hugged the book in his arms closer to his body, all he wanted to do was to get back to his room so that he would be able to start looking at it without his mother being there. There was no way that he could have just imagined that whole encounter, right?

"You should ground him," Regina supplied when the silence passed on for too long.

Emma looked over to the spirit and managed to stop herself from sighing in relief, "you're grounded," she announced.

Henry furrowed his brow as he glanced over to the empty space that Emma had been looking at, but he quickly forgot to question it as his face contorted into an expression of indignation when he realised what she had just said. However, he just sighed in defeat after a moment when he realised that being grounded would give him the time to do exactly what he wanted to do.

"For how long?" the boy sighed as his shoulders slumped.

"Er…" Emma looked back over to Regina, who just rolled her eyes and shook her head. She was starting to see why Henry had liked spending time with the blonde so much; the woman was incapable of reprimanding.

"A week," the older woman replied.

"A week," Emma repeated and Henry frowned when he noticed her looking into the empty space again. He knew that Emma had been acting weirdly lately but he hadn't exactly spent much time with her since the 'incident' for him to know just how strangely she had been acting, though he had heard David mention something to Snow about 'sleep deprivation', so maybe that was why the woman looked so twitchy?

After a moment of consideration, Henry just hugged the book harder and nodded as he started walking forward towards the exit, "whatever," he muttered, before he looked over his shoulder and asked, "can you take me home now?"

He didn't even wait for a response before he continued walking towards the front entrance of the home and Emma shot a look over to Regina. The woman was wearing an unreadable expression, but it was clear that she was upset about standing in the same room as the boy who was no longer her son and have him not respond to her presence. Then again, Emma supposed that wasn't all that different to what had happened before, so the woman perhaps didn't look as upset as she would have after the curse had first broken.

Regina just gestured for her to follow Henry, since she didn't particularly want to talk about her feelings right now even if Henry hadn't been there, and Emma just nodded her understanding. However, the blonde knew that if this wasn't a hallucination and if she would be spending a lot of time with Regina, then she would eventually get her to talk about her feelings.

* * *

Emma tapped her finger against the desk as she stared intently at the book sat upon it. She had spent hours in the vault after she found Henry until finally she realised that she would need to get back to work to relieve her father of his shift. Somehow, all she managed to achieve during these hours was to find the books that absolutely didn't have the information that she wanted. By the process of elimination, the ones that she had grabbed before going back to the station should at least have something interesting in them.

"You could be more helpful, you know?" Emma scowled as she turned another page in frustration.

The brunette sat across from her looked up from the desk in surprise, "I'm not exactly in any condition to be researching, Miss Swan," she said. To prove her point, she reached forward and allowed her hand to move through a pile of books.

The blonde just sighed and shook her head, "I could turn the pages for you…"

"Because that sounds so efficient," Regina shot back.

Emma rolled her eyes and ran a hand over her face, "it would be more efficient than this, I don't understand any of this crap, three of the books were written in Spanish…"

"Elvish," Regina corrected.

"Whatever, the point is that I can't understand them and you can."

The former mayor rolled her eyes and rose from the chair so that she could walk around the desk and look down at the book in front of Emma.

"Well if you couldn't read it, then why have you been staring at it for the past hour?" she asked as she looked over her shoulder.

Emma opened her mouth to say something in reply before she realised just how close the woman was to her. She swallowed hard and looked down at the book when she realised that she couldn't smell spiced apples like she usually would, in fact, if she closed her eyes, then none of other senses would be telling her that she wasn't alone in this room.

"This book is about vampires," Regina announced, seemingly not noticing that Emma's mind was currently somewhere else.

"Vampires are a thing?" the blonde asked with a frown, though her voice had a mix of both fear and excitement in it.

"I have no idea, but I believe that you could research that topic later, Miss Swan," Regina deadpanned.

"How am I supposed to do that, your majesty, when you seem to follow me everywhere?"

The brunette just smirked at the reply and shrugged, "it's not my fault that you're the only person who can see me, though I believe that you should be looking into the fact that I can't seem to be too far away from you…"

The sheriff tilted her head. It had been unspoken between them so far that Regina always seemed to be at least in the same room as her since she had first shown up in the station but Emma had assumed that was probably because she didn't have any reason to go anywhere else. However, when she thought about it, the brunette didn't have much reason to stay in the same room when she was sleeping but Emma hadn't built up the courage to ask if she had tried to leave yet since she didn't want to seem like she was accusing her of being creepy or something. Then again, what was the worst that could happen if she insulted a ghost? She didn't have to be afraid of the fireballs anymore that she used to imagine every time she thought about going to try and befriend the mayor.

"Have…you tried?" the blonde asked, still looking firmly down at the book.

Regina quirked an eyebrow down at the woman and crossed her arms over her chest, "when I first…woke up shall we say, I felt as though I could go anywhere I wished to. However, since coming to the station, there seems to be…something keeping me in your…proximity…"

Emma blushed as she thought about the times that she had gone to use the facilities since Regina had made her appearance, thankfully it seemed that the brunette had been able to stay outside the room but she couldn't help but think about what would happen if they were ever in a place that wouldn't allow for that.

"Which I believe is one of the things that you should be looking into," Regina continued as she gestured towards the piles books strewn across the desk.

"And how am I supposed to do that?" Emma sighed.

"Well…I suppose that I am going to have to teach you Elvish," Regina replied, before she pointed to the chair on the other side of the desk, "we can get started if you could move that over here."

The blonde nodded before she smirked and asked, "does a ghost really get uncomfortable?"

Regina rolled her eyes and replied, "I don't wish to find out."

* * *

Henry blew out a breath as he finally walked into the room that he shared with his mother and fell down onto her bed. He frowned at the sheet that Emma had put up to give him some 'privacy', he knew that she was trying but he still tended to sleep on the couch when Emma wasn't working night shifts. This set-up was supposed to be temporary and he never wanted to complain because it would be like admitting that he missed living in a mansion.

For the past three hours, Snow had been watching him like a hawk but he had finally convinced her that he wanted to try and do his homework upstairs for while. He was surprised that she believed him, to be honest, but he also come to realise that the woman felt somewhat awkward spending time with him since the 'incident'. She so obviously wanted to talk about Regina, but she also didn't feel like she was able to bring up the woman. She was probably relieved when he said that he wanted to go upstairs, since she was sure that there was no way that he would be able to get out of the apartment from the bedroom.

The boy grabbed the book that he had been reading downstairs and sighed down at it when it still looked like his storybook. He hadn't been able to find anything in the book that was even slightly different, but it wasn't like he was able to get the original book and compare in front of his grandmother, that would certainly only lead to questions from the woman.

He ran his hand over the cover and blew out another frustrated breath and he rose from the bed to go over to his small pile of possessions by the cot that Emma hd set up for him (which he had only actually slept on one or two times). He had originally planned to bring all of his things to the Charming's loft, but the moment that Emma had shown him where he was sleeping, he knew that there was no way that he would be able to bring all of the things to the loft. His room at the mansion was almost the same size as the living room and kitchen combined and it wasn't as though all of his things in the mansion were confined to the one room. That meant that his possessions were limited to clothes, a few comic books and his storybook. He used to wait until he was sure that Regina was at work and he would let himself into the mansion whenever he wanted something else, but there was no way that he would be willing to go in there now. He didn't even have the courage to ask anyone if they knew whether Belle was planning to move into the mansion.

Henry shook his head when he realised that he had allowed himself to think about his former home again and he picked up the other storybook and returned to the bed to place it next to the new one.

He plopped back down onto the bed and looked between the two tomes, his eyebrows instantly shot up. The surface of the first book was now completely blank. Henry blinked a couple of times and ran his hand over his eyes and looked down at it again to make sure that he was seeing right.

He snatched the book up and and opened it quickly to find that the pages were completely blank.

"It's rather strange for a mother and son to share a bedroom," someone said from beside the closed door.

Henry's eyes snapped up to the man and his mouth hung open for a moment at the sight of Isaac looking around the cramped space.

The boy sat shocked for a moment, but after a few seconds, his mind seemed to register that the man who could give him the answers he wanted was in the room and he held up the blank book, "why did you give me this?"

The Author tilted his head as he finally turned his attention to the boy on the bed and replied, "you said that you want to be my Apprentice, that's your first lesson."

"But…there's nothing in here…" Henry argued, though he was unable to suppress the smile that was tugging at the corner of his lips at the thought that he was actually the Author's apprentice.

"That is because the part of the story that I want to show you hasn't been put to paper. My predecessor considered it to be 'unnecessary backstory' but I whole-heartedly disagree."

The boy frowned as the man spoke. He had the sinking feeling that he knew exactly what the man wanted to 'teach' him. Isaac had seemed so impassioned when he had talked about Regina back at the mansion, if he was trying to teach him something, then Henry had no doubt that it had something to do with the Evil Queen.

"What do you mean?" Henry asked, hoping that his suspicions were wrong.

"I am a firm believer that every character should be complex. In reality, you would never find a person with no backstory so it is insane to believe that you can pick and choose the parts of their lives that you should write about. Just because you want someone to appear as a villain in your story, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't include what lead to that point in their life. Do you understand, Henry?" Isaac asked, with a hopeful expression spreading across his face.

The boy looked down to the blank pages in on his lap and the back over to the storybook that was sat next to him, before he shook his head.

"A villain is a villain," he argued, "there's no sob story that can justify being evil."

Isaac sighed and shook his head, "I was hoping that this wouldn't be necessary, Henry."

Before the boy could ask what he meant, the man strode across the room and pulled a pen out his back pocket and placed it onto the blank surface of the book.

Henry's eyes were forced closed by a sudden bright light. When he opened them again, he found that he was still sitting down, but this time it was on a log underneath a tree at the top off a hill.

The boy blinked repeatedly as he looked at the open fields which appeared to lead down to a massive estate hundreds of acres away from where he currently sat, it was honestly surprising that he could even see it from here.

"The Enchanted Forest is quite beautiful, isn't it?" Isaac asked form his position leaning against a tree.

"The…Enchanted Forest?" Henry asked with awe dripping through each of his words. He had long dreamed of visiting this place, though if he were honest, he would much rather be sitting in the view of a palace rather than an estate.

"The estate of Prince Henry Mills to be more specific," Isaac replied.

The boy just continued to stare at him in confusion, but before Isaac could say anything in explanation, he was interrupted by the sound of a man calling out:

"Regina, my dear, where are you?"

Henry frowned as his eyes fell onto a man with a huge smile on his face as he climbed up the hill.

The boy gripped onto the log as the man seemed to stare straight at him, but he quickly walked passed him.

"I know you're here, Regina," he laughed.

"I'm studying, father," came a reply after a moment and Henry pushed himself off the log so that he could see where the sound had come from. A moment later, a little brunette girl popped her head out from the other side of the tree and held up the open book as if she were proving a point.

Henry's eyes widened as his mind slowly processed who this was. She looked to be about seven-years-old and if it wasn't for the distinctive chocolate brown eyes, Henry could have almost pretended that this was some random child. There was also the fact that this child smiled so naturally. He had seen Regina smile during her time as his mother, he never had a doubt that she was happy during the time when he acted as though he actually loved her, but smiling never looked to be her natural state. This child, on the other hand, looked very happy in this moment.

"Your mother is not here, why are you studying?" the man laughed as he approached her, his steps quickly faltered, however, as he realised what he had just said and he held up his hands quickly, "please don't tell her that I said that."

Regina laughed and pushed herself to her feet so that she could walk around the tree and meet her father, "don't worry father, I won't," she laughed as she snapped the book closed between her hands.

The man who Henry realised must be Henry Senior put his arm around his daughter's shoulder, "I brought you a present," he said as he began to lead her away from the tree and down towards the stables.

"She doesn't look very evil to me," Isaac said as he gestured towards the girl walking closely to her father as she laughed at whatever he had just said.

"She's like seven…" Henry argued, though he was still looking at the pair walking down the hill. He had asked once where his name had come from but Regina had insisted that it was just a name that she liked. He never once considered that he would have been named after her father and now he couldn't help but wonder what had happened to the man.

"So you agree that this isn't the 'Evil Queen'?" Isaac asked.

Henry just shrugged and nodded, "I guess…but she will be…"

Isaac sighed again and shook his head, "as much as I would love to stay here trying to convince you otherwise, it would appear that you have a prior engagement."

"What do you mea…"

"Henry, it's time for dinner," Snow called.

Henry blinked and looked around the room. Everything look exactly was it had a moment before but the book that was once on his lap was now gone. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone to find that 45 minutes had passed even though it had felt like mere minutes since he had plopped down onto the bed.

"Henry," Snow called again and this time the voice sounded a lot closer.

The boy turned his eyes away from his lap and called back, "I'm coming."

 **Reviews are very much appreciated :)**


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter seven

-Two days later-

Chapter seven

"Why did you never translate this into English?" Emma sighed heavily as she flicked the page absentmindedly. In the past few days, all they had learnt was that in a few recorded cases, a spirit would tether themselves to another person. Emma had no idea why Regina's spirit would tether to her considering that they were never more than two people who occasionally tolerated each other. Since this whole ordeal began, Emma was sure that she had spent more time with the woman in the last three days than she had since she met her combined.

"Because I can read it, why would I translate it?" Regina frowned.

Emma rolled her eyes and looked back down to the page, though a smile tugged at the corner of her lips when she realised that she recognised far more symbols than she had a few days ago. However, her frown quickly returned when something occurred to her. She had been so insistent that they should search for information about spirits but now she was coming to realise that she had absolutely no idea what she actually wanted to know. Did she want to know how to break the tether? Did she want Regina's spirit to be able to move on? If that happened, then it would mean that Regina Mills would actually be gone forever. But then again, was it plausible to think that she could live the rest of her life being followed by the ghost of the former Evil Queen? Surely, she would eventually want to start a serious relationship and she wouldn't be able to do so if an apparition was always in the same room as her, most likely making some sarcastic comments about her choice in suitor.

As much as she didn't want Regina to go away, she knew that there was not a single person in the world who she would want to spend every minute of every day with, no matter how much she cared about them. It was fine for now, but there was going to be a point where she would have eventually had enough and she honestly didn't know what she would do when she reached that point.

"Emma?" Regina asked, interrupting the sheriff's intense thoughts. The woman appeared to be miles away as she stared blankly at the page.

The blonde blinked and looked up at the ghostly figure beside her, she smiled tightly and pointed at the symbols on the page as if it would emphasise her point.

"What about future generations, Regina?" she argued, "you could have translated it so that everyone can read it…"

"It's not as though I ever planned to have an apprentice, Miss Swan," Regina deadpanned.

Emma just rolled her eyes and continued to frown down at the page for a moment, before she took a deep breath and finally asked, "what exactly am I supposed to be looking for?"

Regina shrugged and replied, "that would depend upon what you wish to know, Emma."

The saviour bit the inside of her cheek as Regina's words brought her back to her thoughts from a moment ago, "I don't know…what I want to know…"

The brunette rolled her eyes. She could tell that the younger woman was too afraid to bring up the fact that they were ignoring the looming factor of the sustainability of this arrangement that they found themselves in. It wasn't as though she really wanted to be a ghost or spend the rest of Emma's life by her side. There was also the fact that she didn't know what would happen when the blonde's life inevitability came to an end, would she be allowed to move on at that point or would she just be tethered to another person? Neither sounded too promising a fate to her, but she didn't quite know how to tell Emma that she wanted her to find out if there was any way that she would be able to get out of this. Surely, there had to be some way to return her spirit to her body? All that sounded far too hopeful for her and it wasn't as though if she returned to life that she would have much to look forward to. Henry still seemed to despise her. The only difference would be that she would now be able to hold an actual conversation with Emma.

"Perhaps…there are other matters in your life that you should be focusing on?" Regina suggested.

Emma frowned at the woman's words and replied, "I think that when you're being haunted by a ghost that should be your number one priority…"

Regina sighed and rolled her eyes as she said, "I am not haunting you, Emma, how many times do I have to say that?"

The blonde just shrugged and the former mayor just rolled her eyes again as she continued with what she had originally planned to say:

"You have a son, Miss Swan, he should be your 'number one priority'."

Emma blew out a breath and nodded. Her instinct was to argue that Henry had been acting like a little jackass since 'the school incident' but she knew that there was no way that Regina would agree with her. The woman had a tendency to agree with Henry and give him exactly what he wanted, which was the only explanation as to why she had been willing to leave him alone for six months and then draft and sign adoption dissolution papers whilst also being willing to stand in front of a gun for him. She just wished that the boy himself would be willing to see the correlation between Regina's actions and the fact that she so obviously loved him.

"What am I supposed to do?" Emma sighed as she kept her eyes down on the book again. She was now thinking about just how little time she had spent with Henry in the past couple of weeks. She was fairly certain that she hadn't been in the same room as him for more than a couple of minutes at a time, but there was a very good reason for that. She was sure that if she did spend an extended amount of time with him, then she would just end up shouting at the stubborn boy. However, she knew for a fact that underneath the façade, there was a boy who was missing his mother. Maybe his subconscious thought that if he pretended that everything was fine then he wouldn't have to deal with the fact that he had lost the woman who had raised him for the majority of his life. Obviously. he had moved straight onto the denial stage of grief, though he was certainly taking it to the extreme. It wasn't as though he was pretending that Regina was still alive, he was just pretending that he never cared about her when Emma knew for a fact that wasn't true. This was the boy who had begged Emma to stop the angry mob from killing Regina because she was his mom and nothing had happened in the past half a year that would change his mind on that sentiment. Then again, Emma supposed that was the issue here. Nothing had happened between Henry and Regina during all that time, which was probably why the boy felt as though she didn't care about him. Emma often had the sneaking suspicion that he always wanted Regina to try and come back into his life, whereas the former Evil Queen seemed to think that he wanted nothing to do with her. Overall, it just felt as though everyone involved would need at least a few therapy sessions which one of the party wouldn't be able to attend as a ghost.

Regina quirked an eyebrow when that thoughtful expression overcame the blonde's face as she had noticed that it often did. During all of the hours that she had spent with her, she had noticed that the woman seemed to get lost in her thoughts a lot, but she supposed that the woman wasn't yet used to the fact that she no longer had any time to just sit and think by herself. That meant that she had to allow her mind to just drift at any possible moment. However, Regina had also started to notice that the woman tended to either be at the station or in bed, she had exchanged maybe one or two sentences with her family members since she had started trying to deal with her new companion. She was also sure that she hadn't really talked to any of the Charmings since 'the incident' considering how awkward they appeared to act around each other on the rare occasions when she did speak to them.

As much as she knew that she shouldn't really care about Snow and Charming, she knew that she did care about Henry. There was no way that she was going to allow the saviour to not act like a good mother after everything that the blonde had done in order to reach the point whereby she was his mother, even if she was dead set against making it legal. She would be dammed if she sacrificed herself for Henry only for his birth mother to become withdrawn.

"You should be thinking about Henry's wellbeing moving forward," Regina replied after a moment of thought.

This only made the younger woman frown harder, it wasn't as though Henry was in any physical danger, his grandparents were more than capable of making sure that he was fed, housed and kept warm, but it occurred to her that her mother had been acting off since Regina's funeral. She knew that the death of her former stepmother would affect her in some way, but she had no idea to what extent. She knew that it was not a topic that the woman would broach on her own, but she was now getting the distinct feeling that it was something that she would want to try and get Henry to talk about if she could. If the boy was truly still going through his denial stage, then that would make spending days with his awkward grandmother all the worse.

"I'm assuming that you have some suggestions?" the blonde sighed.

"Henry is used to living in a mansion and now he chooses to sleep on the couch when you're home," Regina replied, as if this should be obvious.

"What's your point?"

"He isn't too far away from being a teenager; you can't expect him to keep sharing a room with his mother," Regina said slowly, since she could see that the younger woman was being purposefully obtuse. "I know exactly how much you earn, Miss Swan, you can certainly afford to move away from your parents' loft."

The blonde frowned and tilted her head. She had certainly thought about moving away but she knew that Snow would freak out if she suggested it so she had just kept the thought to herself. The loft, however, was beginning to feel increasingly smaller by the day and Emma had a feeling that her mother would be likely to agree at this point. It wasn't like moving out would mean that they would never see her again and she would certainly still use them as her own personal babysitting service.

"You want me and Henry to find our own place?" the woman said, almost as if she was clarifying that she had heard the woman right.

"Henry needs a home and that cannot be a place where all of his things are confined a corner behind a sheet," Regina replied, though Emma noticed that she was refusing eye contact in that moment. "He will need his own space and it would be better to see to the issue sooner rather than later."

Emma just frowned and shrugged, "I'm not really one for real estate…"

The brunette just rolled her eyes and asked, "do I need to help you with everything, Miss Swan?"

* * *

Henry blew out a breath of frustration as he continued to stare at the blank pages of his newest storybook that had reappeared after he returned from dinner two days ago.

It had been two days since Isaac had shown up in his room and all he had been able to think about during those two days was the girl who he had seen in the the vision he had been shown by the Author.

He was having a hard time reconciling that girl with the woman who would curse an entire realm of people. It had never occurred to him that Regina was ever a child, even it would make no logical sense for her to have always been an adult. There was also the fact that he had been shown indisputable proof that she was not always evil. The little girl who smiled so broadly at the sight of her father quite clearly had no evil intention to anyone, which begged an important question. What could have possibly happened to turn her from such an innocent child to the woman known through multiple realms as the Evil Queen?

Over the past couple of days, he had been pouring through his original storybook for any clue that could answer his question, but he had finally noticed something that the hadn't before now. None of the stories were ever told from Regina's perspective. Despite that she showed up so many times throughout the book, there was never any reason given for her actions. He had thought that it was simply because she was evil, but he now knew that couldn't be true and it wasn't as if he was ever convinced by the whole 'fairest in the land' thing. Not having clear cut answers was driving him crazy, especially since it wasn't as though he could simply ask Regina for the information that he wanted.

"Blank pages will yield no answers."

Henry blinked, suddenly realising that tears had been forming in his eyes, and looked up to the man leaning against the closed door.

"Maybe if they wasn't blank I would already know what you want me to know," Henry suggested as he snapped the open book shut and shifted closer to the edge of the bed with it in his lap.

Isaac tilted his head with a raised eyebrow and shot back, "the best stories are not rushed."

"This is a story that has already happened though," Henry argued. He would later realise that the had probably been prolonging this conversation unnecessarily because he didn't want to be shown anything else just yet, but in that moment he was determined to finally get answers to the things that'd been bugging him for days, just not in the form that the Author would want to give them to him.

"It is not quite as simple as that, there is always a story playing out at any given moment, just because it is not clear to you right now, it doesn't mean that you should rush through it," Isaac replied.

"Are you basically telling me…no spoilers?" Henry asked with a frown and a sigh.

Isaac laughed and pushed himself from the door frame, "I suppose you could see it that way, Henry. There are events unfolding this very moment that you will need to become involved in, but not yet…" Henry opened his mouth and the man held up his hand to stop him, "and, no I will not tell you what those events are or when you will become involved."

Henry sighed again and just fell back against the bed so that he was lying on the mattress and he used his hands to push the book towards Isaac.

"Just do whatever you want," he muttered.

Isaac shook his head at the petulant boy and pulled the pen from his pocket again as he walked towards the book. It took him a second to open it to the correct page and place the pen upon it to create the same flash of light that he had before.

Henry opened his eyes to see that he was still lying down but that he was now doing so on grass. He blew out a breath of frustration and considered whether Isaac would just give up and take him home if he refused to get up, but that intention was cut short by the sound of galloping.

The boy propped himself up on his elbows and squinted so that he could see the two horses from across the field. He could just about make out the blue riding coat of the female on the black horse and he had no doubt who she was, but he was having difficulty trying to figure out how old this version of Regina was from this distance. He also couldn't make out any discernible features from whoever she was riding alongside other than that he was distinctly male.

"What is she doing?" Henry frowned and looked over his shoulder to see the man leaning against a tree with his arms crossed over his chest.

"Having fun," Isaac replied simply.

The younger of the pair only frowned more deeply. A few moments passed and the sound of the galloping began to get louder as he pushed himself to his feet. On reflex, he looked down to his clothes to make sure that there was no dirt on them, but he quickly remembered that he was not technically here.

"Daniel," a female voice called with a laugh, which caused Henry to look up from his clothes at the middle name that he had never gotten an explanation for. The pair were now close enough for him to see that they were both about sixteen or seventeen. He breathed in a sharp breath at the sight of Regina and a pang ran through his stomach. It was one thing to see her as a child, but a teenage version of her looked far more like the woman who had raised him, which meant that this was technically the first time that he had seen her since the school. However, he was having a difficult time seeing this smiling girl as the same person who had announced that he was no longer her son.

The horses came to a canter so that Regina and Daniel could dismount and Henry turned his attention to him. From his clothes, he could tell that he wasn't the same class as Regina, so they couldn't be relatives but he looked far too happy to be a fearful servant. He soon got his answer as to exactly who he was.

"What are we doing here, Daniel?" Regina asked, "you know that mother hates it when my riding lessons take too long…"

The brunet man just smiled and shook his head, "I have your father's assurances that your mother will not return from her trip until this evening," he said as he walked over to the woman with his smile widening with each step that he took towards her. As soon as he was close enough, he placed a chaste kiss to her lips, as if he was too afraid to do any more whilst they were so exposed.

Regina smiled and took his hand in her own, seemingly revelling in her moment of pure bliss.

"That does not answer my question," she replied, though she now looked far more relaxed than she had when mentioning her mother.

The stableboy removed his hand from hers so that he could use both of them to place on her shoulder and turn her around towards the tree next to one where neither of them could see the Author leaning.

Regina's smile widened when she noticed the blanket and basket laid out on the ground that she had been too preoccupied to notice before now.

"A picnic?" she asked, sounding almost giddy at the prospect.

"With your mother away, I thought that there would be no sense in wasting the opportunity to spend time with you," he replied and began to lead her towards the blanket.

As the scene played out, Henry watched with his mouth wide open. From the moment that he had heard the man's name, he had known that he must have been important enough in Regina's life for her to name her child after him. However, the thought that he could have been her first love (or so he would assume based upon how young they both looked) never crossed his mind. In fact, the thought that Regina had ever been romantically involved with anyone had never occurred to him since he had never really pictured her marriage to his great-grandfather as anything other than a way for her to get a claim to the throne. The woman sat on a blanket with a stableboy, laughing and eating simple sandwiches, did not seem like the kind who would marry a man almost double her age so that she could become a queen.

Isaac watched with interest as Henry blankly watched the past version of his mother and he wondered exactly what was going through his mind. He could only hope that this was achieving the desired effect of getting him to realise that the Evil Queen was once just Regina Mills. He felt as though that was the only way that he could get him to start seeing her as his mother and not the woman who cast the curse.

"She's happy," Henry said hollowly.

The Author smiled sadly at his words and chose to say nothing as he simply waited for what he knew was about to happen.

A loud scream sounded from down the hill, which was quickly accompanied by the neighing of a third horse.

This forced Henry's eyes away from the picnic and to Isaac as he looked at him questioningly. He had clearly thought that this was all he was planning to show him, but the older man proved him wrong by nodding over to Regina. The boy looked back over to the teenager who was now standing on her feet, with Daniel not far behind her.

They both rushed over so that they would be able to see what was going on and Henry turned his attention over as well. There was a horse running across the field, but the young girl riding it did not look quite as comfortable as Regina or Daniel had when Henry and Isaac arrived here. She was screaming as the stead ran frantically and Henry felt his throat constrict at the thought that he could possibly be about to see her getting seriously injured.

However, his worry was quickly allayed when the black horse ran out from behind him and began galloping toward the girl in peril. His eyes widened when he saw the blue riding coat getting further away and not the apparel of the stableboy as he had expected.

A moment later, he blinked and found himself across the field just in time to see Regina pull the young brunette from the rampaging equestrian and onto her own horse. Regina brought her horse to a slow stop just before Henry, who looked over to Isaac with a frown. The Author just shrugged as if to tel him that they wouldn't have been able to hear if they had stayed by David.

Regina jumped off the horse and helped the crying and shaking girl down. She kneeled down and placed her hands onto her shoulder.

"It's okay," she said softly and Henry bit the inside of his cheek as he remembered a time or two that she had reassured him the same way. Of course, he was probably having a tantrum over something silly, whereas she was now comforting someone who had nearly died.

The girl continued to breath deeply for a few moments, as if she couldn't quite believe that she was now on solid ground. She brought both of her hands up so that she could grip the older girl's forearms in reassurance.

Regina soon noticed that she wasn't going to reply and she quickly thought of something that could distract her from what had just happened.

"My name is Regina, what is your name?" she asked as she smiled widely.

The girl swallowed hard and seemed to finally look up at the older brunette in the eyes as she replied, "my name is Snow White…"

"Henry!" his grandmother called.

Said boy opened his eyes and shot up into a sitting position. He took deep breathes as he looked around the room. As he expected, the book was gone from his lap and Isaac was no where to be seen.

Before he could say anything else, the door opened and Mary Margaret looked around it with a frown on her face.

"Emma asked me to get you, she said that she needs to talk to us about something…" she said as sweetly as she could, as she did every time she talked to I'm lately as if he was glass that would break at any time.

Henry simply stared at the full grown woman looking at him. He had never considered the age difference between his adoptive mother and his grandmother. He certainly knew that Regina had to be older than Snow, but he now realised that the age difference was not as wide as it should have been. If Regina actually wanted to marry Snow's father, than the age difference would have been a non-issue, but if that memory had proven anything, it was that a younger Regina looked ready to spend the rest of her life with Daniel.

"Henry?" Snow asked with her eyebrows drawn together, looking far more concerned than she had a moment ago.

"Sorry," Henry said as he quickly realised his mistake, he didn't really want to tell anyone what was going on since he was afraid that they would try and stop Isaac from visiting him. Even if he wouldn't say it aloud, loosing his connection to the Author would mean that he would also loose his own personal connection to Regina. "You just woke me up…" he added, hoping that it was enough that she was enough for her to not question it further.

The explanation seemed to be enough for the woman as she opened the door wider, "Emma's in the kitchen with your grandfather," she said.

Henry nodded and languidly stood up from the bed so that he could follow Snow down the stairs, desperately trying not to think about what Isaac had shown him as he did so.

When his foot hit the final step, he saw Emma leaning against the counter with her father standing next to her. The blonde looked concerned about whatever she was about to announce and Henry thought for a moment that she was shooting looks over to her side, but he pushed that thought aside since the space was completely empty.

The boy finished his walk across the room as his grandmother went over to sit next to her husband and he stood in front of Emma. He made no attempt to find anywhere to sit since he was determined to go straight back up to his room as soon as this was over.

Emma bit the inside of her cheek when she realised that everyone was now here. This was probably the longest that she had spent with anyone other than Regina for a while and she had to admit that she didn't really like the fact that she couldn't talk to the brunette that no one else could see. The blonde flicked her eyes over to the spirit, who was stood with her arms crossed over her chest in much the same way as Henry currently was, if she hadn't given birth to the boy, she would have sworn that the pair were actually related by blood. She noticed that Regina was refusing to look at anyone in the room and she wished that she could do something to reassure her. She decided against trying anything since it would just make her look crazy and she could just easily talk to her later since they were always together anyway.

"Emma?" David said, with the same hint of concern that Snow had when she was talking to Henry.

The blonde blinked out of her thoughts and looked away from Regina, since she knew that her reactions would just distract her from her task. Even if the brunette tried to hide her feelings, she had an inkling that Henry's response to this would leave her incapable of not being at least a little hurt.

"I've been thinking…" she began, again not looking at Regina, since this would probably invite a quip along the lines of 'there's a first time for everything'. The three members of her family were looking at her expectantly and she decided to just get this over and done with, "it has been great living here with you guys, but with Henry living here now, I think that it makes sense for the two of us to move somewhere with more space…"

Snow and David exchanged a look and Emma's muscles tensed as she tried to figure out what the look meant. She wasn't too worried about telling Henry since he had to do whatever she told him to, but she knew that it meant a lot to her parents to have her around to make up for all of the lost time. However, there was also the fact that she hadn't been making up for lost time lately.

"Is that…okay?" she asked slowly when the silence went on for too long.

David looked around from his wife, now sure that they had silently agreed upon their reaction.

"We love having the both of you here," Charming began, briefly looking over to Snow as of making sure that he was saying the right thing, "but we understand that this loft is cramped and you both need your own space….plus, its not like moving across town would mean that we would never see you again."

Emma smiled at this, she was still getting used to having a family, but she had to admit that it was the times when they understood her that she enjoyed the prospect the most.

"That's…great," she replied, "I think I've found an apartment down the street, so we'll probably start moving our things as soon as we've checked it out…right Henry?"

She finally looked away from her parents and over to Henry. She drew her brows together when she noticed that he looked deep in thought. She honestly didn't think that he would mind moving away from the loft since this was always supposed to be a temporary arrangement, but it occurred to her that he might have alway assumed that he would one day go back to the mansion, even if he wouldn't admit it.

"Henry?" she asked again.

The boy looked up at her, as if noticing that she was actually talking to him and he just shrugged, "it doesn't really matter," he muttered, just loud enough to be heard.

Emma resisted the urge to check on Regina's reaction and continued to focus on Henry, "we'll go and check it out tomorrow after school," she said slowly, like she was testing to see if his response was genuine.

"Okay," he replied, "can I get all of my stuff from hom…from the mansion if I'm going to have a bigger room?" he added after some consideration.

The Saviour just frowned and looked over to her parents to make sure that they were just as shocked as she was. This was the first time that he had acknowledged his life outside of the Charmings in a while. When she saw that they were, she allowed herself to finally look over to Regina, who was currently adamantly staring at the floor.

"O…okay," Emma replied when she realised that she couldn't think of any reason as to why he shouldn't be allowed to get his things. She had also been thinking about the fact that they would eventually have to empty out the mansion if he next official mayor wanted it when they finally got around to holding an election.

Henry nodded and said, "I'm going to do my homework," before he walked away without any form of permission from the adults.

He quickly ran up the stairs and Emma allowed herself to look at Regina for longer, already planning to go somewhere private so that she could attempt to talk to her, even if she was sure that the spirit would be very unlikely to engage in a heart-to-heart right now.

 **A/N Sorry for the long wait, haven't had much time for writing lately :(**

 **Please review and let me know what you think XD**


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N I have no excuses for the long wait...please let me know if you're still interested in this fic since I didn't originally plan to finish it**

Chapter eight

Three days passed and Emma still hadn't managed to broach the subject of how Regina was felling about everything.

Honestly, she shouldn't have assumed that being tethered to the ghost of the former queen would have automatically meant that the other woman would open up about her emotions.

Then again, what was there to really say about the fact that her son didn't seem to care about the fact that she was dead.

"I don't want to talk about it, Miss Swan," Regina announced and Emma jumped off the back of the couch she had been leaned against.

The sheriff cleared her throat and looked down at the ground. She hadn't even been aware that Regina knew she was staring at her for the past five minutes. The blonde had been sure that Regina was probably distracted by the fact that they were currently in the mayoral mansion and that everything had a layering of dust.

If Emma hadn't experience weirder, she was sure that there would have been a chill going up her spine at the fact that she was stood in the rather creepy mansion with the ghost of its previous owner. At this point though, she wasn't sure that she knew what she would do without constantly being around Regina.

"Talk about what, Regina?" The saviour asked as innocently as she possibly could.

Regina rolled her eyes, seriously considering trying to see if she would be able to leave the house. She wasn't particularly excited about seeing her son picking up all of his things whilst being actively disinterested in anything that reminded him of the woman who was no longer his legal mother.

"You know exactly what I'm talking about, Emma," the former queen sighed.

Emma hunched her shoulders for a couple seconds and took the opportunity of the awkward silence to look around the room again.

There were many photos scattered around, which made the saviour absolutely sure that there was no way that Regina had stopped think of Henry as her son, despite her final words.

She just hoped that the boy wouldn't be able to come up with some rationale why it proved she was evil.

Finally, she decided that there was no reason to be in an awkward silence with a captive audience and she said, "well Regina, it really doesn't seem like you have anywhere else to be right now so you might as well..."

Regina rolled her eyes again and shot back, "what, Emma? Talk about the fact that I'm dead and my son doesn't care? Or the fact that it's my fault that he doesn't care?"

"Regina..." Emma said slowly and pushed herself off the couch to go over and comfort her. However, she seemed to remember that her constant companion was actually a ghost and couldn't be touched, and probably wouldn't appreciate it right now even if she could,

The sheriff stayed away from her, but said, "he does care, Regina."

The former mayor shook her head and just turned away from the other woman and closed her eyes. She had no idea if she was even able to cry and she would rather it not be Emma Swan who discovers that she can.

Before Emma could try and say anything else reassuring or hopeful, the sound of a key turning in the lock made her clamp her mouth shut. She'd slowly been figuring out how to make sure that no one thought she was talking to herself and that mostly meant being very vigilant about when there was about to be a new arrival in any given room.

She continued to look cautiously at Regina, however, until Henry entered the room with an unreadable expression clutching his backpack straps. It was more than strange walking up to the mayoral mansion again.

He'd spent the day convincing himself that it would mean nothing. He would spend ten minutes grabbing some comic books and clothes and then they would be on their way. Emma would ask him how he was feeling, he would say 'fine' and then he would never have to think about his adoptive mother again.

Of course, it wasn't that easy to feel fine now that he had seen a couple scenes about the Evil Queen that were not in the book.

None of it by any means vindicated her actions over the years, but he could no longer pretend that she just thought Snow White was prettier than her.

Especially now that he knew what it was like to lose someone so important in your life, he could see how it could easily translate into hate for the person responsible. He was fairly sure that if her ever saw Jefferson again, he would want to at the very least punch him.

Of course though, he was still desperately trying to remind himself that Regina Mills was still responsible for the pain and suffering of many people.

She was the evil that the saviour was supposed to defeat and it didn't really make sense for the evil to be alive after the heroes had already won.

Logically, she served no narrative purpose.

But this still didn't help with the twisting in his gut as he glanced around the living room that looked exactly as it had all those months ago.

A part of him had been convinced that all evidence he had lived here would have been placed into boxes the moment that Regina had decided to have the adoption dissolution papers drawn up. Surely the Evil Queen was easily able to distance herself from her feelings? Even as he thought it, he knew that it wasn't true. She wouldn't have reacted in the way that she did to Daniel's death if she had really been the heartless witch that the book had made her out to be.

"Hey Henry," Emma said slowly and he could tell by the tone of her voice that she was cautiously optimistic. He'd known for a while that she was waiting for him to breakdown and admit that his missed his mom, but he was determined that wouldn't be happening today. He needed to be happy that he now had everything that he wanted when he had gone to Boston to find his birth mother. It would be hypocritical for him to miss the woman who he had spent so long trying to bring down.

"Hi," he mumbled, looking determinably at his feet. He didn't want to risk looking at any of the photos or any of the points that would incite memories. It would force him to face the fact that she was never technically a bad mother, she was strict at times (which he could now understand now that he'd had the displeasure of witnessing Cora's parenting style), but none of that changed the fact that she was Evil Queen and what she had done in the Enchanted Forest.

Emma looked over to Regina who was also refusing to look at anything but the ground and she had to stop herself from letting out a growl of frustration. She just wished that Henry could see just how much he was alike they looked in that moment. She could swear that she could swear that Regina looked more like his biological mother than she was,

The blonde was about to open her mouth to ask him how he wanted to do this but the boy seemed to have had enough of the silence and he started to walk towards the stairs, "can we please get this over and done with?" He asked without looking back.

Emma bit the inside of her cheek and glanced over to Regina in time to see her flinch slightly at his words and she wished that she could just tell Henry that he shouldn't say things like that in front of his mother. Of course, he would either think that Emma was crazy for thinking that she had been followed by a ghost, or he would think that Regina was planning something evil by haunting the saviour. Neither option seemed like it would help in this moment and she couldn't catch Regina's eyes to shoot her a reassuring smile. There was no way in this moment that she would be able to make Regina see that Henry was acting like this because he was pretending that he didn't miss her so she decided that she could just hope that something would happen later to make her see what she saw. Surely, Henry couldn't continue to pretend to hate Regina the house in which he had so many good memories amongst the bad ones?

"Okay," the blonde sighed and moved to follow the boy towards the stairs.

* * *

"I'm not sure how I can answer that question in a way that I haven't at least a hundred times to the sheriff, deputy," Whale sighed.

David looked up from his notepad with narrowed eyes and the doctor rolled his own. He wasn't too surprised that Emma would care so much about Regina's death. He'd had a feeling that there was something going on between the pair before she died, at the very least the saviour had an attraction to the former queen. But he couldn't think of any reason why Prince Charming would care so much about the woman who had spent so much time trying to take away his happy ending.

"The equipment has never been serviced, apparently that wasn't written into the curse. We've ordered new equipment now and set up procedures to make sure it's checked every year, do you need the invoices?" He asked.

"No," David ground out. He was starting to see why Emma was so frustrated whenever she got back from talking to Whale. He couldn't get passed the idea that the doctor was hiding something but he couldn't quite put his finger on what it could be.

If Whale wanted Regina dead, why would he have used Jefferson to do it? He could have just let her die during the surgery that he had performed on her and claimed that there was nothing that he could have done.

"If there isn't anything else deputy…"

David clenched his jaw and tried to think of something else that he could ask that hadn't already been asked. Emma had already asked him outright if he had been involved in Regina's death and according to the reports, he wasn't too happy with the question.

He didn't see that he would be able to get any other answer than his daughter had gotten, honestly he wasn't even sure why he was here. He'd just been reading through the case on his shift since there was nothing else to do and something had made him want to go and talk to the doctor to see if he could gather any more information. In that moment, he was starting to understand what it was that had made Emma so obsessed with what had happened to Regina.

After all, her prognosis had looked pretty hopeful after her surgery. Plus it didn't seem right that Queen Regina would be taken down by a bullet after everything that she had achieved in the Enchanted Forest, it just didn't feel like a very satisfying end to the story of the infamous Evil Queen.

There was also the fact that he had just started seeing just how little time Emma had spent on the case in the last couple weeks. There seemed to be something off about the saviour and he just hoped that finding some answers might help her go back to being the daughter that he had been getting to know since the curse broke. That was something that he and Snow couldn't exactly do when she didn't seem to want to spend time with any other Charming, she apparently just wanted to be alone all time, which didn't really make sense considering that he hadn't seen any evidence that she had been investigating as hard as she had been after Regina died.

"Yeah that's it," he sighed, finally deciding that there was literally nothing else to ask. According to what was written in all the reports, every possible question was answered by some faulty equipment.

Whale just nodded and blew out a relieved breath the moment he was far enough away to be sure that the deputy wouldn't see it. He honestly didn't think that they would continue to investigate for this long and he just couldn't help but think that the chance that his involvement would be revealed the more that they continued to look into it. Should Jefferson ever be found he had no doubt that the Hatter tell all to try and get himself out of trouble.

David watched Whale go with a bad taste in his mouth. Talking to him always reminded him of everything that he hated about Doctor Frankenstein, not least of all that he had slept with his wife.

He shook his head and pocketed his notepad and began walking towards the exit,.

It wasn't long until he was sat in the cruiser running his hand across the steering wheel.

The look on Whale's face was bothering him. He didn't say it out loud, but David could tell that he was questioning why Prince Charming even cared about the Evil Queen and he had to admit that it was a fair thing to wonder.

There had been many times over the years that he had imagined this exact thing happened. He just wanted her to be gone so that he could enjoy his happy ending with his true love and their child.

However, now that she was actually gone, he couldn't help but feel this hollowness. He always expected to see her in the morning when he got his coffee. It wasn't as if they had ever talked her or even looked at each other on these occasions, but he had just become so used to her being there every morning.

David was now remembering in detail just how every person in that room had ignored the woman and a pit formed in his stomach. Since the curse broke, he had become so used to having everything that he wanted again (plus the happy addition of a grandson) but not seeing Regina every morning was making him wonder what it must have been like to live alone in a giant mansion with no one around.

It was undeniable that Regina was no longer the same woman who had cast the curse. If she was, then she wouldn't have spent months alone, she would have simply found some magical way that she would be able to get her son back. Instead, she had left him alone just as he had asked her to and she had done nothing but simply be the town's mayor when no one else wanted to and as far as he could tell, she had continued to do the job well and in the interest of the townspeople.

He bit the inside of his cheek and forced himself to start the engine. Prince Charming would usually go to Granny's at this time to grab some dinner but he decided that today he would just head home and grab some of the leftovers from the previous night's meal. He wasn't sure that he would be able to handle going to the diner right now to once again see that there was a regular customer who hadn't been there for a while.

Ten minutes later, he had his key in the lock and he pushed the door open.

"Hey Snow," he called, not actually sure if she was home yet. She was supposed to drop Henry off at the mansion so that he could pack his stuff and he was pretty sure that was not something that she would want to stick around for.

He got an answer pretty quickly, however, as a sniffle came from across the apartment and he furrowed his eyebrows.

"Snow?" he asked, completely forgetting about the fact that he was here for food as he walked past the kitchen and over to the bed that he shared with his wife. Sure enough, there was a little lump underneath the duvet and he had an image of Snow White pulling the cover over herself the moment that she had heard the key in the lock.

He tentatively came over to sit on the edge of the bed and he placed a hand onto the lump without hesitation, "are you okay?" he asked softly.

There was silence for about five seconds as the lump contemplated whether it would be possible to remain hidden until her husband finally went away. Finally, she realised that the man wouldn't leave without some confirmation about what was wrong and Snow threw the covers off so that he could see her tear stained face.

David frowned and scooted closer and placed his hand on her cheek and wipe some of the wetness away.

"What's wrong?" he asked close to a whisper, though he had a feeling that he knew exactly what (or more specifically who) the tears were for.

Snow bit her lip and looked down. A part of her felt silly for crying but another major part felt bad for feeling silly.

"I took Henry to the mansion…"

"Seeing the mansion reminded you of Regina?" David asked.

Snow swallowed hard at the name and nodded, grateful that she didn't need to find the words herself.

She took a breath and looked back up to him and said close to a whisper, "I miss her."

David smiled sadly at her and nodded. He shifted so that he was sat more fully on the bed. He placed his arm over her shoulder and pulled her into his side.

Snow continued to cry into her husband's shoulder and she had to admit that she appreciated him running circles on her back.

However, it didn't help with the guilt.

Regina had been gone for weeks and she had been trying to act as if she didn't care, which was probably what made him think that he could do the same. Regina may have done some horrific things but that didn't mean that she didn't deserve to only be mourned by Emma and Archie.

David was silent for a while as she cried. There was really nothing that he could say considering that he was now realising why he felt so crappy about everything.

Finally, he thought of something and he asked, "how about we go to visit her on Wednesday? We could take flowers to her father as well."

Snow went rigid for a second at the thought of seeing Regina's body again, it was just bringing back memories of the way that she had fallen to the ground the moment that the bullet had hit her.

However, it quickly occurred to her that not even Emma had visited Regina since the funeral so she figured that it made sense.

"That would be nice," she sighed, deciding that now was not the time to talk about that they should probably take Henry to see her at some point.

* * *

 **Would love to hear what you thought :)**


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